Damnificados by JJ Amaworo Wilson, PM Press, 2015
JJ Amaworo Wilson is a master of evocative details that conjure up characters like Nacho, the brilliant cripple, in words so alive that I found myself becoming more alive in their company. And the brothers—Nacho and Emil, so different, so unpredictable in their actions and thoughts, but absolutely predictable in their loyalty to one another–stir a longing in me to see this loyalty expressed in all families.
Wilson knows our human strengths and weaknesses and portrays it all—in the massive “Chinaman,” who guards the gates and has “the gift of stillness;” in Maria, the hairdresser whose beauty salon is frequented by prostitutes and teachers alike, and whose business acumen, street smarts, and compassion find humane and common-sense solutions in emergencies; in the two-faced priest who is wary about the poor getting an education in the school they have established in the tower. As he explains to Nacho . . . “you know where literacy leads. . . . They’ll read books. They’ll read the constitution. They’ll read their rights. They’ll learn they have been exploited throughout history. And then, there’ll be only one end.”
“Which is?”
“Revolution.”
The damnificados, the “lowest of the low rising to the heights of the third-tallest building in the city. Sicarios, Knifemen, Assassins, Bandidos. Quick-handed, cold-eyed. The unholy, the unhoused, led by the lame.” How do these damnificados get past the “hounds of hell” that guard the entrance? How does this ragtag, diverse lot of humanity organize a functioning community in the Tower of David?
We know from the outset–from their initial encounter with the two-headed wolf and its wild pack, that the hundreds “who come from the cardboard cities and the shantytowns on the hill” and converge on the abandoned tower, owned by one of the most powerful families in the city, will show us another way of being. Meeting with one disaster after another: wild dogs, rapacious rats, hunger, illiteracy, floods, epidemics, threats and then military assaults, the damnificados unite. They use their combined strengths and unorthodox faith to organize themselves and to outwit fate and the powerful evil that threatens their survival. And they do it with the irony and quick humor that is often found in those who survive by their wits and by their sharp observations of those in power.
I didn’t want this novel to be magical realism; I wanted it to be a documentary. A documentary that proves social justice will prevail, greed will be swallowed up by the earth, and the evil that men do, will NOT live after them.
JJ Amaworo Wilson is a magician with boundless talent.
Damnificados is available in local area bookstores and on Amazon.
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