What If Hamlet’s Father Was a Cholo?

Combating toxic masculinity through Chicanx feminist thought and practices is the subject of this chapter. As a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Bloodline by Joe Jiménez allows us to openly wonder what Hamlet would do, what he would be, if his sole instructors on what it means to be a man were Claudius or King Hamlet. At play in Bloodline is a search for ways that young men, specifically young Brown men, can undo the toxic engagement of masculinity with violence. The answer posed in Joe Jiménez’s novel entails the use of Anzaldúan feminist critical concepts and practices, represented in the novel through its leading female characters, Gertrudis and her girlfriend, Becky, and Ophelia and her mother. These critical concepts, as articulated by the women and queer women in the novel, open the possibility not only that machismo can be critiqued and new masculinities constructed, but also that from such personal and societal changes will emerge new worlds in which young men like Abram can answer, in better ways, what it means to be.