RaveSan Francisco ChronicleJaime Cortez’s debut story collection, Gordo, opens with \'The Jesus Donut\' ... The story is funny and incredibly charming, despite highlighting the acute poverty of the camp’s Latino migrant residents. \'The Jesus Donut\' sets the tone for the collection’s waggish and tender look into this significantly ignored world of California migrant communities, here set around Watsonville in the 1970s — both documented and undocumented — mostly through young Gordo’s point of view and his local cast of characters ... Cortez, a Bay Area author, masterfully navigates adverse conditions of migrant life while prioritizing in these stories the way people adapt to their circumstance — managing to find joy and amusement, love and triumph, that which makes us delightfully human — amid its challenge ... There is refreshing retribution for the sissy boy, however, in the character of Raymundo, introduced later in the collection. At first, you cringe as you follow his all-too-familiar struggles through middle school in \'The Problem of Style\' gratefully dignified by Cortez’s sweet humor ... Raymundo is a revelatory character in fiction, and one of the book’s beloved achievements.
