"A large wall mirror faces him. He tries to look at the mirror wth detached inspection, but his gaze immediately locks him into the mirror," Genaro Gonz alez writes in his short story "Un hijo del sol." "Ad n stared . . . Two pairs of eyes-- those of himself and of his reflection--mesmerized each other and met at some distance between the mirror and Ad n. He felt himself as being some place outside his body. Where am I? he thought. Space. Spaced out. Estoy afuera. Yo soy . . . nAda nadA . . . ."

Just as his character Ad n struggles to find himself and understand his heritage in "Un hijo del sol," Gonz alez grapples with "the existential angst felt by many young Chicanos," according to Manuel M. Mart¡n-Rodr¡guez in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Besides entertaning readers, however, Gonza lez's fictional explorations...