Post Modernism in Jaime Becerra’s King Taco, by Christina Woodson, no use of this work allowed without written consent

 Christina Woodson

English 380

Professor Saunders

10 March 2023

Post Modernism in Jaime Becerra’s King Taco

Postmodernist theory is a literary convention that encapsulates metafiction, and intertextuality and thematizes both historical and political issues. In Michael Jamie-Becerra’s King Taco, he uses settings, contextual reliance, diction, and even existentialist questions to drive this poem toward finding meaning when none can be found. The poem takes on elements such as Marxist critique as well, as the whole poem is riddled with questions and ideas that ultimately relate to economics. It presents itself as a simple day, influenced by the woes of capitalism, but with strategic critiquing, any reader can infer many deeper meanings to the existential whimsicalness that is this King Taco worker. 

The first introduction to this poem is the title, King Taco, which begins to enact a stipulation for readers who can contextualize this place. King Taco is located in East Los Angeles on the fourth street. The restaurant is built in an assembly line fashion, with metal all around the wrapped counter, fluorescent lights inside and out, and tiny windows to order and retrieve food that could be considerably compared to jail windows. The only splashes of color are intense yellow and red, similar to the food packaging they contain inside. It remains to be down the street from two major colleges as well. Through those tiny windows, any worker can peer out and see industrialized Los Angeles down the street, skyscrapers, buildings, smog, and all. The connotation of King Taco is very depressing, and existential, and embodies a post-modernist feel with the surrounding industrial complexes. Even within the jobs that someone can obtain at a King Taco, it is much like the assembly line style of ordering and eating. Using the literary approach of postmodernist critiques use detaching from absolute meaning, and when we as readers think of King Taco, we need to do so in a contextualized way. The use of the setting being King Taco rather than a fast food restaurant such as a McDonald’s or Burger King is intentional. Those restaurants can be found across the globe, King Taco is an East Los Angeles central location. The consumers and workers alike are working class, brown, and in a geographically poor environment that is surrounded by toxic industries. This embodies a connotation that relates to postmodernism, with self-evident implications of socioeconomic issues. 

One of the first lines that further delves into this idea of the deeper meaning of postmodernism as well as Marxism reads as such: 

“Only one scoop of beef for the tacos,

not so much cheese in the burritos,

this first week is starting to

overwhelm me.” (Jaime-Becerra) The lines produce an idea of the assembly line model explained in the previous paragraph but continue to drive it with the alienation of the speaker’s menial tasks at work. These tasks are low-intensity labor, leading to an assumption of low minimum wage, and an assembly line of tasks between all workers. This most appropriately allows readers to adopt a Marxist perspective, primarily because Marxism is rooted, completely in economics and materialistic ideas. The material in this example is the food products that come to the restaurant, already necessarily ready, they just need to be prepared and served. Though we as readers know all of the worker’s tasks are menial and repetitive, leading to this depressive state of mind, remembering there is no choice. The author decided King Taco as the job the speaker would narrate from for a reason, and that reason is to highlight that the speaker does not have a choice in what occurs throughout this poem. For all we know, this may be the worker’s only job and only source of income. Using the pre-contextual knowledge of king taco, and the setting that was mentioned in the first paragraph, we know that the speaker is not afforded the luxury of quitting this job, even if he wanted to. The speaker is only allowed to give a very limited amount of resources, the resource being food, to the paying customers. The fact that he does seems to overwhelm him, as well as the overbearing corrections that repeatedly come from his supervisor. These four lines represent on the surface, level, a stressful day at work, but mean much more when looked at from this economically dependent point of view. These four lines represent someone with very limited choices and resources, someone who cannot easily escape the structures that society has put around them, and know that may seem far-fetched for something as menial as a fast food job holds meaning in the unfortunate circumstance. That is a society. Without these societal norms, and outside forces that are constantly pushing and disproportionately affecting people who fall into the same context that this author has made the speaker, a part of, then a fast food job could be seen as just that. But given the context of the connotation of these lines and the setting it is certain that this is not the case, and that the purpose is to highlight a feeling of disparity, alienation, and overwhelming emotional states, bringing to readers and audiences an empathetic understanding of the experience of a king taco worker.

While taking a postmodernist approach to the reading, it is understandable that a Marxist approach is not only fitting, but possibly even more appropriate for Jaime-Becerra’s work. The central theme is one of despair and longing, but within the first half of the poem, readers may not be too sure what the longing is for. The poem takes a turn for an answer halfway through. Understanding that the context of King Taco’s establishment is very important to this poem, culturally, geographically, economically, and even socially leads to the answer of what the longing is for. “With all the fees, it’s a miracle

they don’t charge him for dribbling

the ball. I start to wrap up another

a batch of mixed tacos, looking out

over the cash registers into the faces

of the kids in the line, thinking of Juan

while trying to remember

white paper for chicken,

yellow for beef.” Money. Money is the main factor that the speaker is facing in all of this. The audience is aware that the job is minimum wage, that the context of how he navigates the world is influenced by a brown community most likely, and that his son can not afford college. The two colleges nearby are made up of primarily first-generation brown people. For the speaker to look out and understand his resources and choices for sending his son to school are limited is ironic in its fullest: why could they do it, but not him? The question applies to the students as well as their parents. Through this struggle, the speaker is becoming more distraught with a pressing worry about whether or not his son will get a scholarship or not, but he must continue to focus on the job that is not even supplemental enough to cover the cost of his son's education. The descriptive scene as a whole is a depressing irony of the effects capitalism has on the speaker. It leaves audiences with their ‘why’s’ answered, and understanding that it is the longing for his son's education, but similarly to the many choices of life that the speaker may have, it is very limited. 

Michael Jaime-Becerra’s poem King Taco can embody the struggles of capitalism faced by an assumingly Latinx man in the middle of East Los Angeles, through the use of context, diction, and supplemental examples. The poem centers on the longing that all humans have, the longing for a greater purpose. Jaime-Becerra uses the setting to invoke feelings of inadequacy and these goals of purpose. He does so by setting the poem in a place that looks out to the city of stars in a way that frames it to be almost unreachable, then frames the poem on an unsettling circumstance of whether or not his son will be able to be one of the college students in line one day. This leaves the readers with a sense of no choices, especially since the trajectory of his son's college career and overall life, is left to be the choice of people they do not know. Overall, the poem encapsulates and performs perfect examples of postmodernist and Marxist elements, while also allowing for it to easily be dissected using the same literary critiquing styles.

Works Cited

“King Taco” Modules, read Jaime-Becerra’s King Taco, taught by Barton Saunders, Canvas https://csulb.instructure.com/courses/34816/pages/read-jaime-becerra-king-taco?module_item_id=1866920