final thoughts...

i know my blog is a little late. my apologies but i have been sharing the book. Although the book didnt end with any new found discoveries and was not exaclty a surprise ending, i was still a little surprised to not find anything out about the doctor and what happened to him. Also, although i was a bit surprised at how the major continued on with his life, i wasn't shocked at all. I feel that what happened in the last part of the novel, really represented the corruption and broken ideals of the government (and not only the american one). I think that this still goes on today in many governments all over the world, including our own.

What suprised me a bit was Julian Norval's shock as to how he was being treated. This part reminded me a lot of what Lavvy went through with having all his patriotic ideals and dreams broken about this "amazing" government. Obviously with Julian being male and having some influence over others, he was able to recover from the misunderstanding, however only to be forever crushed about the apparent 'freedom" his government claims to give all its citizens.

My only compaint (or whatever you want to call it) is that although this book did deal with mexico and the USA, it didn't really give me the impression that it was a chicana writer. Although there were obvious issues about gender and nation, i felt that it had a lot more to do with issues between the US civil war between the North and South.

I would have liked to see the character of Lola develop more and create more of a sense that she is a chicana and the issues that she deals with but specifically from her perspective. Overall, i liked this book a lot because it gave me an idea of how american society worked during this time in terms of gender, race, politics etc...and their relationship with "foreigners." Good choice john...