In the barrio, the odds are stacked against adolescents. Even those, like Eddie, who fight against negative environmental influences, must face the reality that death comes easily for the young. Eddie sees clearly the consequences of his harsh environment at the beginning of Buried Onions.

I knew the mortuary students would get good jobs because my cousin had died recently and my father and two uncles were dead, all of them now with arms like the arms of praying mantises, crooked and thin as whispers. My best friend from high school was also dead, his head having been caught like bulk laundry in the giant rollers of a steel foundry.

The difficulties Eddie faces are not his alone. The heritage of struggle (first in the fields, and later in the city) feeds the curse he and his neighbors face. The central metaphor of Buried Onions is...