The Sons of El Rey

The Sons of El Rey (2024) by Alex Espinoza is a brilliant historical, polyvocal, family drama with a bit of magical realism that was the August selection for Roxane Gay’s The Audacious Book Club. Although this was the third book from her book club that I’ve read this year, I’ve not been able to manage my schedule well enough to watch the virtual discussions.

The voices we hear from include Ernesto and Elena Vega, who move from a country village in Mexico to Mexico City in the 1960s (Elena refused to be left in the village), where Ernesto becomes El Rey Coyote, a famous Luchador, and they eventually move to Los Angeles. Freddy Vega is their son, who has been running the gym his father opened, and who had his own lucha libre career as El Rey Coyote Junior. But Ernesto is in hospice, the gym has been hit hard by COVID restrictions and hasn’t come back, and Freddy can’t seem to hold it all together any more. Finally, we see things from Julian’s perspective–Freddy’s son and Ernesto’s grandson–who is an out gay man in Los Angeles, a literature professor living the itinerant, working poor life of an adjunct who must work at several different universities across Southern California to make ends meet.

The lore of lucha libre is paramount — the sport has been central to their family for three generations. Freddy and Julian have to figure out how to deal with Ernesto dying, and find a way to talk to each other as they don’t seem to be able to do that. Can Ernesto hear them? Is he hearing Elena talking to him?

Ernesto does have secrets, though, and Elena died with secrets as well, that go to the core of their family. Julian is invited by a gym friend into a business enterprise that allows him to be financially secure for the first time he can recall, but what will be his last straw?

I enjoyed learning about lucha libre, which I had no knowledge of, and the evolution of the characters as they figure out how to move forward after such a central figure as El Rey Coyote is gone. There was no explicit anti-fat bias, although there was some diet culture discussion when it came to training for the luchador matches and the gym that Ernesto opened. I will consider it weight-neutral.