Queerness In Manuel Munoz's Short Story 'Good As Yesterday'

Heterodigetic Approach to Proximity of Queerness

Queerness is something that is still taboo to many people in the world, specifically to ethnic people that come from different cultures and have different social standards and roles. One of these communities is put on display in Manuel Munoz’s short story “Good as Yesterday” in his novel of short stories, Zigzagger. The short story revolves around a Latino family with a Queer son, Nicky, living in the Central Valley. This story is told by an omniscient narrator that is centered on Vero, Nicky’s older sister, and her thoughts that show us the intricacies of their relationship between each other and a romantic partner, Julian, of both siblings. The proximity of her brother's open queerness causes

One of the most critical pieces of information that we get through the narrator is the fact that when Nicky was beaten up on his sixteenth birthday it was by boys he knew, didn’t know, and even boys that he knew intimately. “In one of the alleys in their neighborhood, six of the boys had dragged and beaten him. All six of them had taken turns, boys he went to school with, boys from another neighborhood, boys he grew up with, boys he had secretly fooled with on back porches. Guardio, Peter, Alex, Fidel, Israel, and Andy. They had said that they were tired of him…. Vero had known that their mother did not know anything about Nicky and how the cuts and deep bruises spelled out who he really was.” ( Munoz 126) What we gain from this is that what Nicky experienced was more than a beating; it was sexual violence. It was an expression of power that was used to continue to enforce the oppression system that affects many minorities. It's a rite of passage used by men to denounce homosexuality and to assimilate fully into the world and social standards that they have grown into. The narrator, later on, says, “It is one of the ways that Nicky changed after he was jumped by the boys he grew up with. He’s become more brazen with everything but has yet to face consequences.” Nicky changed as a way to get back to the community that turned its back on him; he decided to become his own person and rebel against those people. However, he still isolates himself to protect himself no matter how much support he gains from the people around him he will always be seen as different. This is what Vero will not fully understand and is why their two forms of being ostracized are other. Nicky is queer because he identifies with it and expresses it, however, Vero only has similar experiences of being ostracized by her community because she does not denounce her brother's sexuality. She supports