My Heart Is a Drunken Compass

This tragicomic memoir is not just about the complications of family, but also about the power of narrative to heal and make whole. A passionate . . . account of personal redemption.

Domingo Martinez is an essential new American voice, and My Heart Is a Drunken Compass delivers on the promise of The Boy Kings of Texas. In a life of chaos and pain he manages to find grace, and humor, and—contrary to the title of this book—real moral purpose. This is a riveting book.

To be an aspiring writer from a poor Mexican-American family of heavy drinkers on the border might read tragic if it weren’t so hilarious in Martinez’s My Heart is a Drunken Compass. Might seem easier when he moves to the Northwest and tries to make like one of the civilized. Glazed, troubled, often lost, Martinez’s too hot, drunken heart is still awful funny in cool Seattle.

Martinez holds nothing back as he interweaves his own downward spiral with tales of his Mexican-American family, his interactions with his social circle, his work and his fraught bond with Steph. . . .Page after page, the captivating Martinez releases a flood of raw emotions in this tender and illuminating memoir.

My Heart is a Drunken Compass is as chatty, funny, philosophical, touching and brutally honest as Domingo Martinez’s first memoir, The Boy Kings of Texas.

At heart a cautionary tale about the destruction that alcoholism, addiction and mental illness can inflict on a family, it's a tough read - and would be harrowing, even - if it weren't so hilarious.

My Heart is a Drunken Compass is a tragic comedy filled with wit and cultural insight….[Martinez] can be hilarious and insightful, especially about moments when cultures merge or collide…..Martinez’s voice, which seems like a cross between a border outlaw and an Ivy League scholar, is so self-assured it’s difficult not to get pulled into the story. Even when he hits rock bottom, he never loses his sense of humor, and his tenacity to survive is inspiring. If his raw will and Texas grit can’t save him, his writing just might.

The follow-up to his first book, the Nation Book Award Finalist The Boy Kings of Texas, this work finds Martinez again mining his personal and family life for narrative gold. This time, instead of focusing on his border childhood he turns his attention to his adult life in Seattle, most notably his younger brother Derek’s near fatal drunken fall and his ex-fiancé’s harrowing car accident that act as catalysts for an exploration of his own personal traumas—including his alcoholic tendencies and near-suicidal depression. Though Martinez’s mischievous nature can still illicit a smile, the self-deprecating humor of the first book has mostly been replaced with self-loathing as the author continually realizes he is unable to help his loved ones because he more often than not refuses to help himself. However, the fact that he knows his issues and is able talk about them in such intricate prose ('My heart was a drunken compass even then, before I was a drunk.') allows this work to remain compelling despite the author’s inability to change. As Martinez rides a roller coaster of relapse and redemption, those who survive Martinez’s self-inflicted wounds and hang on till the end are rewarded with a conclusion that’s unlikely as it is uplifting.