The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo by Oscar Zeta Acosta
"The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo" by Oscar Zeta Acosta is a semi-autobiographical novel that captures the tumultuous journey of a man grappling with his identity as he navigates the complexities of being both Mexican and American. Set against the backdrop of the late 1960s, the narrative dives into Acosta's internal struggles, self-loathing, and the chaos of his life, characterized by humor and raw honesty. The protagonist, who feels disconnected from his heritage and overwhelmed by the demands of assimilation, embarks on a journey that takes him from California to his birthplace in El Paso and eventually to Mexico. Throughout this exploration, he creates and adopts various identities, ultimately leading him to embrace a new self he calls the "Brown Buffalo." This identity symbolizes resilience and reflects the shared history of struggle faced by his community. The novel is recognized for its bold rejection of literary conventions and its assertion that one's identity is a work of art that can be redefined. Acosta's work is significant within Chicano literature, and despite his mysterious disappearance in 1974, he remains a pivotal figure in exploring themes of cultural identity and transformation.
On this Page
The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo by Oscar Zeta Acosta
First published: 1972
The Work
Oscar “Zeta” Acosta’s first novel, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, is a fictional journey through many facts of his life. His tale is vulgar, gross, obscene, frankly carnal, truly pained, wildly raucous, and funny in turns. Acosta’s anti-intellectual stance and his rejection of literary convention express the shock and chaos he invokes to undo his own assimilation, re-create his life, and construct for himself a new and revitalizing identity. Acosta declares his novel an autobiography to dramatize the powers of artistic transformation and re-creation that Chicanos can apply to their lives. One’s identity, like a novel, is a work of art.
On Monday morning, July 1, 1967, Acosta is a lawyer with one year’s experience in an antipoverty agency in Oakland, California. Born in El Paso, Texas, and long a resident of California, Acosta feels increasing tensions between his Mexican ancestry and his personal and professional assimilation into mainstream American culture. He bursts with self-loathing; he sees himself as a little brown Mexican boy in a barrel-bellied, sweating, tormented wild Indian adult body. Crazed with tranquilizers, alcohol, and the bad food he uses to appease his ulcer, Acosta snaps when he discovers his secretary Pauline has died. He walks away from his work and his life.
His quest takes him from California through the Southwest to his birthplace in El Paso, Texas. Then he goes to Mexico, where he recounts his life. All the while he is manufacturing and assuming new fictional identities and reliving old ones. Six months of exploring his past and present lead to his reclaiming his Mexican self and reaffirming his American identity. Both, however, are quickly rejected in the novel’s close with the assertion of his new being as a Brown Buffalo. He and his people are like the buffalo, slaughtered by everyone, and like their Aztec ancestors, brown. He discovers true identity is something one constructs for oneself. He calls his new self Zeta and takes up a new life in East Los Angeles as an activist.
Acosta mysteriously disappeared in 1974, and his fate has never been determined. With only two novels and few stories he nevertheless remains one of the first and most original voices of Chicano literature.
Bibliography
Rivera, Tomás. “Into the Labyrinth: The Chicano in Literature.” Southwest American Literature 2, no. 2 (1972): 90-97.
Rodriguez, Joe D. “The Chicano Novel and the North American Narrative of Survival.” Denver Quarterly 16 (Fall, 1981): 229-235.
Rodriguez, Joe D. “God’s Silence and the Shrill of Ethnicity in the Chicano Novel.” Explorations in Ethnic Studies 4 (July, 1981): 14-21.
Simmen, Edward. The Chicano: From Caricature to Self Portrait. New York: Mentor, 1971.
Smith, Norman D. “Buffalos and Cockroaches: Acosta’s Siege at Aztlan.” Latin American Literary Review 5 (Spring-Summer, 1977): 85-97.