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,