In October of 2004, the University of Arizona Press published a short volume of Mario Suarez's short stories simply titled "Chicano Sketches." "Chicano Sketches" reflects the elusive nature of the stories themselves. Although Suarez himself probably would have considered his stories "sketches," they are much more polished, complete, and intricately structured than the word suggests. The characters, locations, and themes that weave in and out of the stories create a system of social and political signs that moves toward a hermeneutics of Chicano identity. The hope that lies with the publication of the new volume seems to be that critics, scholars, and students will reconsider Suarez's stories in their own context, noticing the unique social underpinnings that both create and are created by the "El Hoyo" story cycle as well as the unpublished works. In this essay, the author attempts to locate several historically and socially significant marks of Chicano identity embedded within several of Suarez's stories in the volume. He discusses Suarez's "El Hoyo" story cycle, which illustrates the processes of hybridity--a reluctance to completely succumb to either the nostalgic past or the capitalist future--in the object of the barbershop, a micro-hybrid space that helps people view the Chicano cultural manifestations of social and economic transition, including the loss of economic independence, the normalization of individual expression, and the creation of a masculine refuge. (Contains 8 notes.)