Fourth Generation Mexican-American Writer James Carlos Blake Delivers Short Fiction That's Long On Style And Substance.
By Jim Carvalho
Borderlands: Short Fictions,by James Carlos Blake
(Avon). Paper, $12.50.
JAMES CARLOS BLAKE'S middle name isn't just a gimmick to
garner border
cred. He was born with both. In the autobiographical essay
opening his fine new collection
Borderlands, Blake outlines
this colorful family history.
Robert Blake, the author's great-great-great-grandfather, was
an Englishman who fathered a child in New Hampshire before heading
to the Gulf of Mexico to become a pirate. He was captured and
executed by the Mexican government in 1826. His son, John Blake,