Fresh Ink: An Anthology

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Middle Grade | Published in 2018

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“A Stranger at the Bochinche”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“A Stranger at the Bochinche” Summary

The narrator tells a story to a group of children about a day when a “stranger” appeared at the Bochinche, a nightclub, where Ramses Garcia Garcia played the congas and Oba Ade Iku sang songs deriving from their cultural history.

A stranger approaches the stage, throwing two small packets onto it. Smoke billows from them as Ramses attempts to stop the stranger, but he loses the man as he heads toward Rosie. When the smoke clears, Rosie is fine, having hit the stranger with a bottle, but her notebook, in which she makes plans and writes designs, is gone.

As the man flees, Rosie and Ramses pursue him, with Rosie driving a “unimotor” and Ramses using a winged “jet pack” to fly through the skies. Ramses sees the man enter a tenement and lands to follow him. He breaks down the door to a room but finds it cluttered and empty. He sees a stack of stories on a desk and begins to read. The stories tell of monsters and are adapted from stories that Oba tells at the Bochinche. When Ramses tries to stand and leave, he finds that two tentacles have wrapped themselves around his ankles. He attempts to use a machete to cut himself free but is stopped by the arrival of the stranger, who holds a gun to his face.

The stranger explains that he’s with the fraternal order known as the Olritch Scourlings, a wealthy group that has sought a way to open a gateway to allow their gods, the Visitors, into this world. He’s a writer who has been coming to the Bochinche, listening to Oba’s stories in the hopes that they’ll help them bring the Visitors to their realm. Ramses notes that based on the presence of the tentacles, the portal is already beginning to open.

As the stranger speaks, Rosie arrives, using a flash cannon to blind the stranger and fleeing with Ramses, who escapes, via jet pack, through the window. As they fly away, they see the stranger looking from a window as the building is engulfed in flames. The tentacles still hold onto Ramses, along with the chair, until Rosie hacks them away. They look down as a sauropod’s head and long neck appear to grab the chair from the sky, but its body crashes into the East River.

Rosie and Ramses consider how dangerous it will be if the portal is opened. The narrator agrees that they’re headed toward an “unknown catastrophe” but notes that they have the strength of their ancestry and the “wisdom of ages” to aid them (110). The narrator laments that chaos and “strife” are coming, but so are happy times with stories, music, and joyful nights at the Bochinche.

“A Stranger at the Bochinche” Analysis

This story unfolds uniquely from a second-person perspective: The narrator tells a story to a group of children, noting, “[T]his story isn’t about us, of course. It’s about you” (101). Framing the story in this way and using a second-person perspective sets up the story as a piece of oral history that is culturally significant to the children and should be to readers as well. Although the narrator never explicitly states the culture from which this story comes, the mention of the word “Orishas” gives insight. An orisha is a divine spirit in the Yoruba religion, which is prevalent throughout West Africa as well as regions settled as a result of the African Diaspora. In addition, as a result of the slave trade, the Yoruba religion is prominent in South American and Caribbean cultures such as Trinidadian, Cuban, Brazilian, and Haitian. The protagonist’s name, Ramses Garcia Garcia, and the setting of the Bochinche, a Spanish word meaning “gossip,” are clues that point to the narrator’s roots in both West African and Latin communities. The story, in turn, becomes a piece of oral history that is being passed down to future generations through the story.

The story takes place in Manhattan and uses elements of both magical realism and the urban fantasy genre. Ramses’s use of a jet pack, the antagonist’s goal of releasing gods from another realm, the creature that attacks Ramses with its tentacles, and the presence of a sauropod all help build the urban fantasy world of the story. These elements help build the story’s central conflict between the antagonist, the titular “stranger,” and the protagonist, Ramses. This central conflict portrays The Importance of Cultural Roots as a theme. Both the narrator and the story’s central characters protect their cultural identities and celebrate them through storytelling and song. For them, this holds power and importance, both in the actual sense in that it allows them to hold onto their cultural roots and in the metaphysical sense through magical realism. Ultimately, the physical conflict of the story between the stranger and Ramses metaphorically represents the struggle for Yoruban people to hold onto their culture in the modern world. They pass on their history through story and song and feel the power that their history and their ancestry hold, while the outside world (like the stranger) attempts to subvert it and use it for its own means. For both the history and the power that these stories hold, the cultural roots of Yoruban people are important to them and, ultimately, to the world.