{"id":11999,"date":"2010-05-03T13:53:30","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T17:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=11999"},"modified":"2016-06-09T17:11:03","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T21:11:03","slug":"dagoberto-gilb-uncle-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/05\/03\/dagoberto-gilb-uncle-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Dagoberto Gilb: “Uncle Rock”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Uncle Rock\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Dagoberto Gilb<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the May 10, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span>\r\nClick here<\/a> to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker <\/em>webpage.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n
This story surprised me.\u00a0I didn’t think, at first, that I would like it.\u00a0The narrative closely follows the consciousness of the eleven-year-old Erick,\u00a0as he follows his mother, a Mexican immigrant,\u00a0from man to man to man.\u00a0Then, it suddenly became much more than an immigrant or a child’s perspective story.\u00a0The story quickly becomes a child’s perspective of a parent flailing to meet\u00a0aspirations in a brutal America that doesn’t seem to recognize the American Dream.<\/p>\n
The narrative opens when Erick is ordering his favorite American food. We then get a very nice passage that moves Erick from one man’s life to another, to free food if the man works in that industry, to a free TV if the man works there, etc.\u00a0Soon we are at a Phillies baseball game (where we learn the story\u00a0takes place sometime during Pete Rose’s tenure there, so 1979 to\u00a01983)\u00a0and Erick has caught a homerun ball. There is something tragic and empowering at the end, and it’s definitely worth thinking about both events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is Dagoberto Gilb’s “Uncle Rock.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Dagoberto Gilb: \"Uncle Rock\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[519,94],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-11999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dagoberto-gilb","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Uncle-Rock.jpg?fit=1200%2C1198&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-37x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11999"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18594,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11999\/revisions\/18594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11999"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}