Rhina P. Espaillat, judge of the 2014 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize,
describes Furious Dusk, David Campos's winning collection, as "a
work whose five parts trace a son's efforts-only partially
successful-to fulfill his father's expectations and-perhaps even
more difficult-understand those expectations enough to forgive
them." The poet's reflections are catalyzed by learning of his
father's impending death, which, in turn, forces him to examine his
father's expectations against his own evolving concept of what it
means to be a man. The poems' speaker sifts through his past to
find the speckles of memory that highlight the pressures to fit the
mold of masculinity forged both by the Mexican culture of his
father and the American culture he inhabits. The problematic norms
of both rip the speaker in two directions as he recounts his
father's severe parenting, as he explores the inability to father a
child, as he witnesses human suffering, as he overeats and
confronts the effects on his body, and, finally, as he realizes
what it means to transcend these expectations. The speaker's
epiphany frees him to reject masculine stereotypes and allows him
to see himself simply as a human being. That realization, in turn,
enables the speaker to see his father not only as "father,"
"husband," and "man," but as a citizen of Earth. Through Campos's
bold imagery and accessible language and themes, he memorably adds
to the continuing conversation of the effects of cultural
expectations on the children of immigrant parents.
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