The Five Wounds

Angel is one of the novel’s protagonists and another of its primary voices. She is 15 years old and heavily pregnant when the narrative begins, about to give birth to her first child. Like so many of the other characters in the story, Angel is marked by generational trauma. Nonetheless, although the reader initially sees an unflattering view of her through her father’s eyes, Angel’s voice reveals her to be a smart, self-reflective, emotionally intelligent, and responsible young woman.

Angel, a teenage mother, is also the product of a teenage pregnancy, making her role clear in the theme of Generational Trauma and Healing. Marissa tried to give Angel a stable home, but as a young mother herself, Marissa was not always successful. Angel grew up almost entirely without the support of her father; she is, in many ways, living out the generational trauma of her absent father, who lost his father when he was a young boy. Marissa’s boyfriend, Mike, is not a positive presence in Angel’s life. To cope, for a time, Angel turned to alcohol, sex, and partying, resulting in her current pregnancy.

However, at the start of the novel, Angel is more of an adult than the actual adults in her life. She is forward-thinking and practical about the future, recognizing in Amadeo’s windshield repair business idea the seeds of failure and, in her own life, recognizing the need for change. Angel takes seriously her GED program’s lessons about parenting, work, and education, thinking critically about how to apply these ideas to her life. She was an engaged student while still in high school, and although that academic interest was derailed by the lack of stability in her home, she strives to re-engage—first via Smart Starts! And then in through her plans to re-enroll at her high school.

Angel’s introspective nature also plays out in her exploration of her sexuality and her more intimate relationships. With Lizette, Angel is self-aware enough to understand that the sex she had while partying was about self-medication and coping rather than real desire; she recognizes her own sense of queer becoming as a true reflection of her individuality. Although Lizette is a difficult and often manipulative partner, Angel is solidly grounded in her own feelings, and the relationship teaches her much about herself and about other people. In turn, Angel recognizes as well that her habit of “pushing people away” is only a veiled attempt to get them to choose to “draw her close again” (383).

Yolanda is Amadeo and Valerie’s mother, making her Angel’s grandmother. At the beginning of the story, Yolanda has just learned that she has a brain tumor that is likely terminal. Much of her characterization focuses on her relationships with her descendants; her memories of her late husband, Anthony, whom she calls her “her one ruinous love” (240); and the way that she comes to terms with her impending death.

Yolanda is initially an enabling figure in Amadeo’s life. Even though he is in his mid-thirties and still living in her house, she does not pressure him to find a career or even a steady job. Instead, she financially supports his numerous “business ventures,” which are little more than ill-planned schemes. Yolanda defends him to detractors and hides his brushes with the law. However, much of this behavior is the result of Yolanda’s keen awareness of how trauma has affected her children, Amadeo in particular. Yolanda’s husband was a volatile, sometimes-violent man who struggled with heroin addiction, and he died when her children were still young. Accordingly, Yolanda understands that Amadeo and Valerie are, albeit each in their own way, struggling to overcome both childhood and generational trauma.

Yolanda is incredibly supportive of Angel, and the two are closely bonded, much more so than Angel and her father at the beginning of the narrative. And yet, all of Yolanda’s relationships fall by the wayside to some degree after she receives her cancer diagnosis. The long-time protector and supporter of her family members, Yolanda is unable to shift roles; she cannot initially bring herself admit to her children and granddaughter that she is dying. Yolanda contemplates her own mortality and tries to make sense of her life alone, with much of her story told in the form of monologues. Her thoughts are not public, and her children are not privy to her deepest moments of self-reflection.

Valerie is Amadeo’s sister. She lives in Albuquerque, where she is a recently certified school counselor. Valerie just completed her master’s degree and is well aware of the theory and practice of various educational and treatment programs in the area. At one point, Yolanda recalls Valerie’s understanding of generational trauma as beginning with colonization, when Spanish settlers intermarried with local, Indigenous women. Although this comment is made in passing, the idea underpins much of the novel’s thematic structure, speaking to the uneasy relationship that many in the Padilla family have with Catholicism. It, too, is bound up with the history of colonization in the area. Even though Las Penas is solidly Catholic, the Catholic Church undeniably suppressed the Indigenous cultural and spiritual practices that were widely practiced before the arrival of the Spanish.

Valerie is also a survivor of domestic abuse, which speaks to the theme of Generational Trauma and Healing. Valerie and Amadeo’s father, Anthony, was a volatile, rage-prone parent who struggled with addiction until the time of his death, when his children were still quite young. Amadeo and Valerie have manifested the trauma of his parenting in different ways: Amadeo himself struggles with anger and addiction, and Valerie found a partner whose behavior recalled that of her father and Amadeo. At the same time, Valerie’s status is that of a survivor rather than a victim, and her happy children and successful career speak to her resilience and ability to heal.

Tío Tíve is Amadeo’s great uncle. He is an elder in the community and has been in Las Penas his entire life. He lives with his Doberman, Honey. Although he can be gruff, he cares deeply for his community and family. He is not judgmental, providing guidance and assistance to Amadeo and Angel through their various troubles and missteps.

Tío Tíve plays an important role in the community. As one of the hermanos active in the Morada, he has a leadership role within the brotherhood of non-clergy spiritual leaders in Las Penas. He is responsible for charitable donations, mutual aid, spiritual education, and the management of religious rites like the Semana Santa procession in which Amadeo and later Isaiah play the role of Jesus. At the beginning of the narrative, he is hesitant to allow Isaiah into the brotherhood because of Isaiah’s struggles with opioid addiction; the fact that, the following year, he allows Isaiah to serve as the procession’s Christ demonstrates his dedication to helping the “lost souls” in his community. Amadeo, too, was an unlikely pick for the role of Jesus. That Tío Tíve twice chooses young men who are grappling with personal difficulties indicates that he reserves judgement, does not stigmatize those suffering from addiction, and provides community support to those in need.

Tío Tíve personally knows the pain of addiction. He lost two family members, Elwin and Anthony, to the opioid epidemic. He understands how addiction and generational trauma interweave, and his work with the community and the support he gives to Amadeo, Angel, and Yolanda in their times of need are his way of helping his family and the inhabitants of Las Penas to heal. He is not a major character within the narrative and appears more in the early sections of the story and at its conclusion. Nonetheless, he embodies the theme of Generational Trauma and Healing through his kindness, humanity, and deep understanding of his family’s strengths and struggles. 

Marissa is Angel’s mother and Amadeo’s ex-partner. She was still a teenager when she gave birth to Angel. Although she and Amadeo initially promised their families that they would marry, the two gradually drifted apart as Amadeo became less and less involved in the life of their daughter. Marissa and Angel have a strained relationship, and their estrangement is one of the narrative’s inciting events. Marissa has a troubled romantic relationship with a boyfriend, Mike, who does not treat Angel well; Marissa eventually breaks it off with him in a show of support for her daughter and grandson.

Marissa was still an adolescent when she became pregnant, and as she herself admits, did not have access to the kind of support network that Angel enjoys. Although her parents and Yolanda helped her manage the work of parenting, Marissa lost both a portion of her adolescence and adulthood to pregnancy and childrearing. She did not have the opportunity to participate in the kind of teen-parent-focused GED program that Angel attends.

Marissa, even as an adult, struggles to choose appropriate romantic partners. Amadeo failed to live up to the responsibility of parenting. Her latest boyfriend, Mike, is emotionally volatile, not equipped to handle a teenage girl, and behaves so inappropriately that Angel moves out. Marissa does seem to be looking for love, but she lacks the emotional intelligence to maintain a healthy relationship with a suitable partner.

Marissa herself is emotionally volatile, and although she is more responsible than Amadeo, she does not always provide Angel with a stable and healthy home. On beginning her relationship with Mike, she joined him in encouraging Angel to stay out late so that they could spend more time alone together. Marissa was aware that Angel was drinking and having sex. Though Marissa could have come to the conclusion that her daughter’s behavior was a kind of coping mechanism, she ignored the situation until Angel became pregnant.

Marissa, like Angel and Amadeo, does find redemption within the course of the narrative, and once she begins to be a more stable presence in Angel’s life, Angel is able to forgive her. At the end of the novel, she, Amadeo, and Angel have formed a nontraditional family of sorts (she and Amadeo do not rekindle their romantic relationship), and she is supportive of her daughter when they meet Ryan and his mother. Like Angel and Amadeo, too, her redemptive arc is the result of coming to terms with familial obligation and focusing her energy on the health of her family rather than on herself.

Brianna is Angel’s teacher at Smart Starts! Although well intentioned and certainly well educated, Brianna is hampered by her serious lack of relevant cultural knowledge about her students and her casual racism. Both prevent her from truly seeing the people in northern New Mexico in a holistic, fully humanized way. This failing is most evident in her relationships with Lizette and Amadeo.

Brianna has taken a job at the GED program for teenage mothers at the start of the narrative, only just having completed her own undergraduate degree, and she leaves her role at the end of the narrative in order to begin her graduate studies. She is uneasy in the role of educator in part because she does not feel like an authority figure. In addition, Brianna has never had sex, so she is not sure that she is ultimately the best candidate for a teacher of teenage mothers-to-be. Her early interactions with her students speak to this insecurity, and she is motivated more by wanting to appear knowledgeable than by a desire to help her students.

Although very well educated about general theory and practice as they relate to “at-risk” students and teenage parents, Brianna does not demonstrate any direct cultural knowledge of the population she is serving. This lack of knowledge is most evident in her many moments of casual, unthinking racism, such as her comment that it is nice to meet a baby “who isn’t named after a rapper or a car” (192). Angel, although she does like Brianna, balks at this comment and tells Brianna that Lizette had always liked the name Mercedes and planned to name her daughter that from a very young age. Angel sees Lizette as a complex, multifaceted individual embedded in her cultural, community, and familial background. Brianna sees Lizette as the embodiment of a statistic. This limited view is why Brianna ultimately kicks Lizette out of the program: Brianna is not equipped to handle Lizette’s behavioral difficulties, and she does not know enough to realize that Lizette is acting out because of a complex constellation of factors, including unaddressed generational trauma. Although Brianna does have sympathetic characteristics, she is emblematic of a certain kind of nonprofit worker. Accordingly, she speaks to Valdez Quade’s larger interest in representing the complexities of northern New Mexico’s social problems, including the lack of culturally responsive programming for students and adults who are struggling.

Brianna is drawn to Angel in part because Angel, much more so than some of her classrooms, embraces the values that Brianna is attempting to teach: Angel is naturally self-reflective and dedicated to providing a good life for her child. It is only when Angel begins to act out her own trauma that Brianna’s support for her falters. Once again, like she did with Lizette, Brianna retreats into her own unexamined privilege and expels Angel too.

Brianna is similarly incapable of seeing Amadeo as more than a stereotype. She is embarrassed to admit her crush to her friend, referring to Amadeo as a “deadbeat.” Brianna sees the people in Española through a dehumanizing lens, and Amadeo is no exception, even though he actually does see Brianna as a whole, complex person. It is Brianna who is the most struck by their differences. Amadeo seems to meet her where she is. His flexibility is why Brianna is ultimately able to dismiss Amadeo as well. He tries to stand up for Angel after Brianna expels her, but Brianna has prepared a “professional-sounding” speech justifying her actions. This speech, which rings false to Amadeo, is even difficult for Brianna to pull off. But she is too entrenched to question herself, and once again, she retreats to a place of self-righteousness when confronted with an inter-personal conflict she is not equipped to handle.