The Embodied Borders of Gender, Race, and Disability in His Road Home

Anna Richland’s novella His Road Home upends some conventional discourse on the protagonists’ bodies in a romance and, in the process, transverses or makes visible the hidden borders in the lives of its couple, Reynaldo Cruz and Grace Kim. Subverting expectations of the usual interracial romance, there is no white romantic lead. Additionally, both Cruz and Kim are characters of color, yet neither one of them is Black. They come from the same small town, but there are perceptible socioeconomic differences that color their background, eschewing the idea that the travails of people of color are the same. His Road Home does not suggest love and sex can rehabilitate a disabled body into wholeness, but that a disabled person is already whole. Cruz has a voice and agency in the novella, meanwhile, Kim is not presented as a curing savior. Their sexual relationship is afforded the same respect as an able-bodied one, although their interactions demonstrate the physical challenges that amputees face. When language barriers, medical injury, and misunderstandings create communication obstacles, Kim and Cruz engage in collaborative efforts with friends and family as well as each other to mitigate or overcome them. While the narrative strongly emphasizes the dangers of being a soldier and the masculinity associated with it, Kim’s civilian job is also perilous and she is just as capable. Therefore, it could be argued, that this somewhat idealized, yet far from ideal, relationship presents a positive, not condescending, view of racialized and gendered bodies and disability.