Bravo for the Bravos

Beginning:
The beginning introduces the novel and states the thesis (underlined). In Celia C. Pérez’s novel Tumble, twelve-year-old Adela “Addie” Ramírez works in the diner of her step-father Alex and her mother, whose real work is preparing dinosaur bones at a museum. When Alex asks if Addie would like him to adopt her, she realizes she can’t say “yes” until she discovers who her biological father is. Addie’s quest helps her learn about life, mythology, wrestling, and family.

Middle:
The first middle paragraph summarizes the novel. Addie travels from her hometown of Thorne, New Mexico, to the neighboring town of Esperanza, which means “hope” in Spanish. There, she discovers a whole family—Abuela Rosie, Abuelo Pancho, cousins Maggie and Eva, and Uncle Mateo. They are the Bravos, a family famous for Mexican-style lucha libre wrestling in the Cactus League in Esperanza. Addie even meets her biological father, Manny “The Mountain” Bravo. “Up close, he didn’t look like a god or a giant. He looked like just a guy in jeans and cowboy boots and a plaid flannel shirt” (142). She strives to learn more about him, but Manny is often gone, wrestling.

This paragraph explores the theme of mythology. Addie, like most people in Thorne, loves wrestling, but she also loves mythology. She is named “Adelita” in honor of female soldiers who fought alongside men in the Mexican Revolution. “But they were also girls and women who were kidnapped, like Persephone, taken from their families, and forced to join the men” (294). Her mother wanted Addie to be a fighter. Later, for a school project, Addie creates a poster-board pantheon of her family. Pancho and Manny appear as “powerful fathers who hold their children under their spell,” and Addie’s mother and grandmother as “strong mothers who raise their children alone,” and Addie’s cousins as “star goddesses” (340). She sees wrestling itself as a dance combining science (gravity) and mythology (storytelling).

This paragraph focuses on the theme of growing up. At twelve, Addie is growing up, learning how mythology connects to the real world. In a thrilling chapter, she witnesses her father’s return to glory in the ring. He ceases to be a masked “jobber” who lets other wrestlers win and becomes a “face” or hero. However, his success means that he can’t spend much time with Addie. He has to travel to pursue his dream of winning the world champion belt, like his father. Adela is torn about whether to wait for him: “ ‘Why can’t everything in life just have a right or wrong answer instead of all these possible choices?’ ” (305) Life is not like mythology or wrestling, with clear good and bad.

This paragraph focuses on the theme of family. Above all, Addie learns the power of family. Her given family with her mother and Alex is strong, but so, too, is her chosen family of the Bravos. Her friends make up another family, with Cy “whose bond is as strong as a sister” (340) and Gus and Brandon, who star with her in a middle school performance of The Nutcracker. She notes that her uncle’s gravestone reads “Son Brother Husband Father Bravo” and realizes it is “as if our connections to others were what mattered most in life” (266). Addie creates strong relationships—families that make her strong, as well.

Ending:
The ending focuses on how the reader experiences Addie’s world. Tumble is written as a first-person narrative, with everything related through Addie’s eyes. Thankfully, she is observant, so readers experience a rich world: a wrestling ring under the stars, an Airstream workshop lit up like a lantern, a middle school auditorium with a chanting crowd, and a cozy diner with flying paper turkeys. Addie is also smart. She shares with readers a world of science, mythology, memories, and dreams. Through Addie, the author invites us to wrestle with who we are, wonder about how to connect, and maybe even grow up a little.