Through a Portagee Gate

by Charles Reis Felix

Overview

Through a Portagee Gate is both an autobiography and a biography. It gives a remarkably honest self-portrait and an endearing tribute to the author's father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915. The narrative reveals a deep desire to escape the confines of the immigrant, ethnic world, while also acknowledging a keen nostalgia about one's past, a need to remember and recognize those who came before. Felix accomplishes this through unforgettable dialogue and vivid characterizations worthy of Steinbeck—a prose sometimes poignant, at other times hilarious that strips human experience to its bare and powerful elements.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780972256148
Publisher:	Tagus Press
Publication date:	11/30/2004
Series:	Portuguese in the Americas Series , #2
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	484
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

CHARLES REIS FELIX (1923 - 2017) was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Portuguese immigrant parents. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1941 to 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. After the war he received a B.A. in history from Stanford University and became an elementary school teacher. He is the author of Crossing the Sauer, an account of his experience as a combat infantryman in World War II; Da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934; and Tony: A New England Boyhood. He lives in Northern California.

Table of Contents

Preface
Prologue
I COME TO CALIFORNIA
Every Foul and Stagnant Pool
A Portagee Gate
No Taste for Air
“Them Portagees Are Wrecking That House”
The Inalienable Right of Revulsion
Senhor Fragoza
The Dermatologist's Report •“I Don't want a Portagee in the Family”
Better Far Better
“What Kind of a Name Is That Anyway?”
The “Mudsill” Analogy
Senhor Oliveira
A Money Test
Fidel and His Father
A National Calamity
PA
“I Should Have Voted for Hoover”
Pissing in Brockton
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Sir Master
Attaching the Dog
Chatting
The Only Portagee in Philadelphia
Mrs. Maud D'Haze
Podubnia
His Roll
At the Shop
The Cuckoo Man
Tickets
Old Ribeiro
The Bank
Sunday Dinner
At the Shop Again
Doctors
The Christmas Tree
Counting Money
The White Gloves and Brown Coat
Insurance
Eggs
His Father
The Fourth of July
Take a Guess
Locking Up, Saturday Night
Work
Giving to the House
NO MORE
Among the Dahlias
Coca-Cola
The Americans
Cabral the Pharmacist
Sam
Polocks and Other People
Hannibal and His Elephants
Deliverance
My Blue Suit
Class
‘'If I Can Give You a Push Up, I Will Be Glad To Do It“
College
My Career
Ann Arbor
John the Beggar
Income Tax
Razor Blades
Coffin Avenue
Nothing Stays the Same
His Father Again
”Do You Still Remember Setubal, Mary?“
Gone
Lines
Like a Song

What People are Saying About This

Frank X. Gaspar

“Through a Portagee Gate is a valuable document, a record, a history, and autobiography, a memoir, an elegy. When readers encounter Felix’s carefully drawn dramatic scenes, his exacting prose, and his deeply human people, they understand that he is engaged in a work of art. Felix is a writer possessed of humor, wit, and a great heart.”

Katherine Vaz

"Through a Portagee Gate is a plain-spoken, down-to-earth account of an American voyage, rich in fable, anecdote, and wit. Charles Reis Felix writes as boldly as if carving scrimshaw about the soles fixed by this father, a cobbler, and the tread of life upon various nearby souls, including his own."
— Katherine Vaz, author of Mariana, Saudade, and Fado & Other Stories, the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and Briggs-Copland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University

Llewellyn Howland III

Through a Portagee Gate is the story of two men told with novelistic brilliance. Passionate, witty, full of anger, but leavened with equal amounts of hope, it is the most moving biography I've encountered in years—and one of the most remarkable autobiographies.

Editorial Reviews

"Reading much like a novel, with its rich detail and emotive content, Through a Portagee Gate offers a profound look into the Portuguese immigrant psyche and the evolution of a post–industrial city."—Donald Warrin, author of So Ends this Day: The Portuguese in American Whaling 1765–1927 and Land as Far as the Eye Can See: The Portuguese in the Old West

"Through a Portagee Gate is a valuable document, a record, a history, and autobiography, a memoir, an elegy. When readers encounter Felix's carefully drawn dramatic scenes, his exacting prose, and his deeply human people, they understand that he is engaged in a work of art. Felix is a writer possessed of humor, wit, and a great heart."—Frank X. Gaspar, author of Stealing Fatima and Leaving Pico

"Through a Portagee Gate is the story of two men told with novelistic brilliance. Passionate, witty, full of anger, but leavened with equal amounts of hope, it is the most moving biography I've encountered in years–and one of the most remarkable autobiographies."—Llewellyn Howland III, author of The New Bedford Yacht Club: A History

"Through a Portagee Gate is a plain-spoken, down-to-earth account of an American voyage, rich in fable, anecdote, and wit. Charles Reis Felix writes as boldly as if carving scrimshaw about the soles fixed by this father, a cobbler, and the tread of life upon various nearby souls, including his own."—Katherine Vaz, author of Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories

From the Publisher

Through a Portagee Gate is a valuable document, a record, a history, and autobiography, a memoir, an elegy. When readers encounter Felix's carefully drawn dramatic scenes, his exacting prose, and his deeply human people, they understand that he is engaged in a work of art. Felix is a writer possessed of humor, wit, and a great heart.

Frank X. Gaspar

Reading much like a novel, with its rich detail and emotive content, Through a Portagee Gate offers a profound look into the Portuguese immigrant psyche and the evolution of a post—industrial city.

Donald Warrin