Acosta’s 1972 The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo has been reissued into an alarmingly unchanged world and is as relevant as ever, argues Chris Bateman

In our seemingly global age, what is the role of identity? Are we really who we say we are and do we have the right to define this? Or, is it the case that identity, so often wielded against the other, has become just another brand? Something you pull on in the morning to mark yourself out as different to everybody else? The question of identity is one that plagued Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, the Mexican-American writer, lawyer, politician, and activist to such an extent, that it drove this restless spirit all over America and Mexico, fuelling his compelling autobiography. Rendered beautifully in this reissue by London’s excellent Tangerine Press, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo is an absolutely essential book on the subject of identity, at the heart of which are the age old questions: just who the hell am I and what am I doing here?

The timing of this book, which probes the question of what itmeans to be a Mexican-American couldn’t be more appropriate. Written in theearly seventies, one of its more striking features is the seemingly inexorable prejudicethat Acosta had to face, a discrimination that, if we are to believe thecurrent president’s comments and opinions, still hangs dark and low over modernAmerica.

The book switches back and forth from Acosta’s childhood to his hedonistic, and generally troubled adult life. It is in the chapters about his formative years, growing up “a hick from the sticks” in Riverbank, California that we get a sense of how his wild and pugnacious character was formed. Moving there from his birthplace in El Paso, Texas, as well as speaking Spanish, led to Acosta and his family being treated as “outsiders… and outcasts”, a fact that meant he was always going to have the sense of being an interloper, a hang-up that he struggles with into his adult life, where he finds himself berated by the locals for not being able to speak Spanish – long-forgotten in his life spent trying to fit in in a country whose lingua-franca is not his own.

The chapters committed to his adulthood are commonly populated by a vast array of hippies, drug dealers, hillbillies and others who marked out the American landscape during the counter-culture period of the late sixties and early seventies. In language that is sometimes absolutely electric, and at other points struggles with clarity, Acosta regales us with accounts of his drug and alcohol intake that, depending on your point of view, is either hugely impressive or rather disturbing. That the other great hedonist of American culture, Hunter S Thompson was a friend, and great admirer of the wild living of Acosta comes as no surprise. Indeed, Thompson based the character of Dr Gonzo, the pill popping attorney in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on Acosta. The book also includes Thompson’s introduction to the 1989 edition and brings both value and context to the book. In capturing Acosta’s combative, profligate approach to life, he describes him as a combination of “250 pound Mexican (and) LSD…, a terminal menace for anything”, a fitting description for Acosta and his vigorous approach to life.

Although the tales are wild and hugely entertaining – and overall you are rooting for this complex, sometimes frustrating character – unfortunately some of the language he uses can be off-putting on occasion. We have civilised ourselves enough to no longer accept it when phrases such as “faggot” or “pussy”, frequently deployed throughout, are used and Acosta’s adoption of a plain-talking, anti-intellectual, man of the people style is no excuse for it.

The book opens with Acosta, naked as the day he was born, assessing himself in the mirror. It’s an appropriate image to start with as he really does bare all throughout the book. Clearly struggling with his identity, Acosta engages in a dialogue with the self, interior monologues that take the form of imaginary conversations with his shrink, where he indulges in a sort of self-analytical enquiry, being pretty harsh on himself while he does it. Acosta is not a man we can describe as comfortable in his own skin. Sex and desire, bowel problems, an almost frequent need to get completely out of his mind on booze or drugs, our Brown Buffalo takes you on a journey deep inside his psyche. In doing so, he also takes us with him across America, journeying in his present and past and all the time, which makes you question not who he is, but who we all are.

A lot of the questions of identity that he asks are more relevant and in a sharper focus today than they were back in the early seventies. With threats of giant walls to be built, populists screaming about taking back control and an ominous sense that who we are is beginning to matter too much again and for all the wrong reasons, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo is a book which matters today. Its importance lies not in what it says about post-war America, but in what it asks us about ourselves today.

The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo by Oscar “Zeta” Acosta is published by Tangerine Press.

Chris Bateman
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