Blog Entry 22: Freestyle: Flaming Iguanas

I'm reading Erika Lopez's Flaming Iguanas for ENGL 339. I like it for several reasons: 1) it's cheerily risque, which is not my style, so it's good for me, 2) it combines narrative with cartoon images and harkens back to Crumb but from a female perspective, so I like the genre play and the legacy of cartooning represented, 3) it claims the road narrative and an approximation of the wild road life for women, and 4) the main character is funny--she's brash and insecure at the same time, very likable.

Here is an example of what I like about the main character: Tomato (Jolene) Rodriguez has decided that she and her friend Magdalena are going on a motorcycle road trip, but she doesn't know how to ride a motorcycle. She decides she's going to become a motorcycle gang of one, the "Flaming Iguanas." Because she needs a biker jacket, Tomato attempts to embroider the gang name on the back of a leather jacket but only gets through "Flam." That's OK with her: "I didn't care about the FLAM thing. Once I put on the jacket, I was leader of the pack, armed with a Jell-O theory of independent togetherness" (47). I love the just-do-it but with humor spirit of this: it doesn't matter that she doesn't know how to ride a motorcycle; it doesn't matter that her jacket is pathetic; it doesn't matter that her gang isn't really a gang; she's still gonna seek an adventure on the road. Tomato's attitude is both heartwarming and hysterical.

Work Cited
Lopez, Erika. Flaming Iguanas. New York: Scribner, 1997. Print.

Image Source
Book Cover for Flaming Iguanas. amazon.com. n.d. Web. 12 Aug. 2012. <http://www.amazon.com/Flaming-Iguanas-Illustrated-All-Girl-Novel/dp/068485368X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344806808&sr=8-1&keywords=Flaming+Iguanas>