Toxic Masculinity: The Misadventures of a Barrio Boy

This book is a requiem. The original title of this book was The World Is a Barrio. The idea was to pay homage to the band WAR. The song The World Is a Ghetto inspired me to see the world differently. It encouraged me to see the world beyond the one I lived in. And the world I was raised in was one of gangs sex drugs violence poverty systemic/structural racism education inequity health disparity food insecurity patriotism and death. A ghetto. A barrio. For whatever reason so many in the world want to forget this world existed and still does. Some cancel-culture cancels culture. I used the title for my second novel instead.Then I wanted to title the book The Pinche Piñata. This title was a metaphor-a play on the expression Mi vida loca. It was the original title of my second novel. I shopped the manuscript back in 2011. No one was ready to publish a book that examined transgender identity development and gender dysphoria. No one wanted to watch a boy grow up in the barrio and survive his machismo family. Or maybe it was because less than 10 percent of the fiction-authors published are people of color.The meaning of the title The Pinche Piñata was intended to describe how my life felt. I have been a piñata. Life was the stick. That stick beat me again and again until I finally broke. And that was when all the good stuff came pouring out-everyone ran up to take a piece. However I felt uncomfortable cursing every time I told someone the title. It is not something I do very often. So I called my daughter. She says Dad your work is about the damage of being nurtured in an environment of toxic masculinity. She says How about Toxic Masculinity?Another proud-dad moment. Of course . . . It was not life I survived you survived he survived she survived they survived we survived. It was toxic masculinity.This book is a collection of poems based upon the lives of those that I have grieved loved feared respected and survived.