Gringo: Used as a disparaging term for a foreigner in Latin America, especially an
American or English person. He who speaks an unintelligible language, thus he who
is a foreigner, a stranger. The American Heritage Dictionary
The first novel of Travis Barrett’s trilogy about immigration was Strangers, a
nightmarish look at illegal immigration that became recommended reading for
Mothers Against Illegal Aliens and described by a Barrelhouse reviewer as Barrett’s
“masterwork,” and “The Most Important Book of the Twenty-First Century.” The
reviewer went on to say, “THANK GOD someone has finally mustered the courage
to write this book,” and called Barrett a “great American.”
Like its predecessor Strangers, Gringo de-romanticizes immigration, legal or illegal,
by depicting it as a Darwinian struggle for survival, an act of desperation. Gone is
the time when immigration could be seen as a building of a glorious new nation and
civilization. In the 20th and 21st centuries, it has become a process of cultural and
national disintegration and dissolution. Thus, Gringo is more than just a story of
illegal immigration; it is a depiction of America’s decline and fall.
Written in the naturalistic tradition of Zola, Crane, Norris, and Dreiser, Gringo
seeks not to lighten the burden of reality, but to give a truer representation of it. It
seeks not to light a candle in the darkness, but to extinguish the flame so that the
darkness can be more fully appreciated.
