"El Monte Yellow Jackets" on Carnival Lit Mag

Wrestling with My Father's Ghost

Before my father died, he had been working on a novella length piece of fiction that took place during the late 50s/early 60s in Southern California. Some time back, I revisited it and cut down one of the story-lines to a short piece dealing with a father and son. The son loves playing baseball in Southern California with his friends, but his father can't get past his romantic view of Mexico.

I described the process of revising, and adding and subtracting sentences as arguing with my father's ghost about the craft of fiction.I had first read the piece in its entirety after he had passed in 2006, so it was a good opportunity to revisit the messages and images captured in the writing. When I got around to submitting it, I had listed the author bio as the following:

Julian Medina grew up in El Monte California, was the first in his family to graduate from college and taught English at Mt. San Antonio community colleges before dying of a heart attack in 2006. He had two sons, Zeferino and Cruz Medina.

Followed by my bio on the website. Unfortunately, only my bio is listed on the website, but I'm glad that this story has nonetheless been able to continue.

Read the sneak peek of the Vol 4 issue of Carnival Literary Journal here:

http://www.carnivalitmag.com/featured/medina/ 

 Reflecting on the story, I see a great deal of connection with the themes and subject matter mastefully done in Gary Soto's short story collection Baseball in April and Other Stories