American Dirt

The Red Yankees Hat is a symbol of Luca’s grief for his father, Sebastián. It represents the importance of remembering and maintaining a connection to lost loved ones in the wake of their absence. The red Yankees hat originally belonged to Sebastián, who was murdered in the novel’s opening chapter. Over the course of the story, it becomes an emblem of Sebastián’s continued presence in Luca’s life even after death. Grief, or the processing of loss, is a central theme of the novel: Lydia, Luca, and most of the characters they meet over the course of their journey are attempting to work through the pain of losses they have endured. On the one hand, grief involves learning to move through life without those who’ve passed. But it also involves learning how to proceed in life with the presence of loss. In this regard, memory is a central component of grief, as effective grieving requires acknowledging and accepting the reality of a loss in order to heal from it.

Throughout most of the novel, Luca is very attached to the red Yankees hat, almost to the point of being obsessed with it: he wears it constantly, sniffing it because it has retained Sebastián’s scent and taking great pains to keep track of it. But by the end of the novel, when Lydia and Luca start their new life in Maryland, Luca’s attachment to the red Yankees hat evolves; instead of wearing it, he makes a home for it on his shelf with “his other treasures.” This evolution reflects Luca’s own maturation and grieving process. For Luca, in the beginning, the red Yankees hat seemed to represent Sebastián himself; in this regard, to have lost it would have meant losing Sebastián. But Sebastián was already gone, so, as Luca matures and accepts this reality, he learns how to effectively grieve this loss and go on living without him. The hat’s placement on his shelf resembles a kind of alter, then, one that serves to commemorate Sebastián’s life while also allowing Luca the space to cope with his death and move on.