With Eddie gone, Marci and her family settle into a new routine.Įddie’s return brings a new wave of violence. Before leaving, Flor gives the girls knives. The girls decide to stay with their mother. Eddie leaves, but Delia refuses to go with Flor. Eddie strangles Flor, who pulls a knife on him. She is confused to see her Uncle Tommy emerge from the booth followed by Father Chacón.Īfter Eddie beats Corin for refusing to eat the white of an Easter egg, Marci’s maternal grandmother, Flor, arrives to take Marci, Delia, and Corin away. At a fundraiser, Marci hides in the church after hearing laughter from the same confession booth. She is surprised that the priest, Father Chacón, accepts her orientation, but she assumes he mistook her for a boy. In her first Catholic confession, Marci panics and admits her same-sex attraction to girls. She notices that his uninjured eye shows emotional trauma later compared to looks given by both Corin and Delia, Marci’s mother. When Danny, Marci’s cousin, returns from the Vietnam War after losing an eye in combat, Marci accidentally sees the wound. When Marci and her family move to a new apartment, she meets Randy, a feminine boy who lives nearby, and Raquel, a teenage neighbor who Marci develops a crush on. Marci cannot remember what set off his first attack on her and Corin, her younger sister.

Throughout most of the novel, Eddie is drunk when he becomes violent, but his outbursts are otherwise arbitrary. She recalls a night in which Eddie tries to commit suicide with a hunting rifle. Marcía Cruz, or Marci, asks God to make her father, Eddie, leave and to turn her into a boy. Occurring sometime in the 1960s, the Vietnam War is the main point of historical context in the novel, serving as a mirror to the violence and hopelessness Marci experiences. The scope of the novel is mostly limited to Marci’s home, her extended family, and locations in California. The reader is only privy to Marci’s thoughts and experiences. What Night Brings is written in a first-person limited point of view. She also won the Miguel Mármol prize for bringing light to human rights issues. Trujillo also earned accolades for What Night Brings, including writing awards such as the Paterson Fiction Prize and the Latino Literary Foundation Latino Book Award. She edited an anthology of works by lesbian Chicana writers titled Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About in 1991, and she edited another anthology, Living Chicana Theory.

What Night Brings is Trujillo’s first novel, but not her first published work relating to its central themes.

Chicana Lesbians by Carla Trujillo