Reviewing Julian Silva, Move Over, Scopes and Other Writings

 Book Review: Julian Silva, Move Over, Scopes and OtherWritings. UMass Dartmouth: Tagus Press, 2011. ISBN978-1-933227-33-7

I am walking near Lisbon’s theater district while carrying a copy of Julian Silva’s new collection of short stories called Move Over, Scopes and Other Writings (Tagus Press). Parque Mayer has been the center of various rehabilitation projects (both proposed and completed), all intending to inject new life into an area that was particularly in vogue during the early twentieth century. Well known for their revistas or revues, the theaters specialized in cultural and political satires of contemporary issues.

Silva’s collection opens with a novella “Move Over, Scopes.” Like the revistas, the novella centers on a timely topic: the teaching of creationism versus evolutionary theory. Rather than using satire, Silva interweaves this classroom-based argument with broader issues of social class, culture and politics in a Portuguese-American community of fictional San Oriel, California. There is a familiarity with the setting, which is due (in no small part) to Silva being the descendant of Açorean immigrants who settled in the San Francisco Bay area in the late nineteenth century.

We then follow the stories in almost chronological fashion with various narrators and central characters aging as we move through the collection, finishing with the author’s recollections of his great-grandfather’s second marriage. These stories are carefully crafted and rich in detail, reflecting an erudite handling of often complicated life matters.

Among Silva’s carefully assembled menagerie of characters are women who stand out as dynamic additions. The women range from the forthright teacher Miss Dobson to Kimi, a Japanese-American babysitter who remains gentle but strong in the face of post-Pearl Harbor internment. Even Silva’s great-grandfather’s wife possesses a great resonance while remaining an enigma.

I found that a number of characters in these stories portray a sense of distance: whether it’s physical, as recounted through travels such as a trip to the Brontë parsonage at Howarth or whether emotional distance, as in the case of the “brave little Cossack” Nikita, a sickly child whose mother prevents anyone else from getting too close. 

In his acknowledgments, Silva mentions how a second life has been given to several stories in this collection. In particular, the novella and memoir pieces remind me of the varied and rich stories of the Portuguese diaspora throughout North America and how important it is to develop a stage so that these stories can be given new lives.