all i can say is wow....

the two stories in the second half that really had an effect on me were "eyes of Zapata" and "bien pretty." Eyes of Zapata really showed the sadness and vulnerability of this woman who is longing for something that she cannot have which is kind of what Bien Pretty is about as well. I just found Eyes of Zapata to be some poetically written and written in a manner that is so vivid one can almost image being in her place. The way this woman describes Zapata as he sleeps has so much detail in it, and you can feel the devotion and her love towards this silent and misterious person who never fully appreciates her. Her description of how they met to her description of where they are now and how he is with other women shows us her emotions over time and filled me ( the reader) with sadness and how this love withers over time , but not because of her losing her feelings towards him, but because of who he is, the situation of mexico during this time, and all the hardships she went through, eventually becoming numb to it all. This story is filled with so much heartache and suffering because of love, that it makes one wonder whether the mistified zapata was all he was led up to be?? it definatley made me question and at times hate him and his motives while at the same time attracted to his character more and more, which is what i think, the woman is going through.

Bien pretty also talks about a woman losing her man. also a man that comes off as mysterious. I liked how it showed the ignorance of this americanized mexicana towards other mexicans. For example when she asked Flavio if he knew any indigenous dances. I think that after he left, and after agonizing for so long, she finally decided to start living her life how it was meant to be lived. Not watching herself live her days but actually living them. She seemed to have been really affected by this mexicano who whisked her off her feet and then disappeared, someone who she thought had the image of a god, not like those americanos she used to date. I found it interesting how she noted that she could never have sex in english again, because the way spanish flowed and all carinitos used.

Anyways all in all, this was an extroardinary book. I loved the way it was written in short stories and the amount of detail and poetism that Cisneros uses. Id love to know where her inspiration came from for each of these little stories.

cisneros' craziness!!!

this book is sort of written in a familiar way to that of "y no se lo trago la tierra" in the way that it is also fragmented and is broken up into little sections that talk about random (or are they) events and have various titles. the book is a great read and made me want to read more and more. Im curious as to the fact of who these narrators are and where are they located. i guess sometimes they're in mexico and sometimes in the states???

Also something i found interesting is that all the narrators that ive read so far have been children which is another similarity to "y no se lo trago la tierra." I like that this book is in Spanglish (well more english than spanish,,,but you know what i mean).

The point of view of children (of different ages as well) is a really interesting way to get a good perspective on the different situations they were in. From being in a church to being indifferent of someone's death, i thought that each child narrator brought their own persona forward.

The little stories are very random as well. I started out laughing at many of them to being a little shocked at the others. her style of writing is very easy too. Apart from having lots of short sentences or run on sentences, i liked the amount of detail she used to describe scenes (like the one with the Barbies).

Some of the scenes you could almost relate to. By putting yourself back in the age of that child or even now. The scene with the church and people walking on their knees, brought me back to the times that i was in mexico and had witnessed the same thing.

Cisneros obviously puts out many chicano issues up front for the reader. For example when the foreigners wanted to take the pictures of the children outside the church and then realized they were "mericans." I felt that this passage apart from showing cultural diversity, definatley showed cultural ignorance (at least on the gringo side). Also in the other passages when it starts talking about sex, it made me tie this theme back with religion, how mexican catholic females were brought up and the different stereotypes and consequences that came along with rebelling against this traditionalism. Another theme was poverty, when the narrator talked about the boy in her school who had to dress his brothers, and help his mother, and lived poorly, and dressed bad. I think poverty is a large issue in mexican/chicano life, whether it being in the united states or mexico.

Overall, from what ive read, im really enjoying it and hopefully going to be enjoying it even more.

re cap...

i really enjoyed reading the three very differently stylized chicano books. My favourite one by far would have to be "y no se lo trago la tierra" just because of the style its written in, the point of view of a narrator who is a young child, and the highly controversial themes that arise throughout the book.

I hope though, that in the novels to come, we touch on issues like chicana feminism and the problems that arise in their lives, in contemprorary USA. i was surpised not to have found a single book or at least an article by Gloria Anzaldua, who is one of the most influential chicana women writers out there. For anyone who is interested in this literature i highly recommend reading her work. She is highly inspirational and has a very unqiue and magnificent style of writing.

Another theme that i feel we haven't touched on as much, and perhaps its because we've been reading about mexico/USA in the 1950's and earlier on, but the idea of space i find is really important when talking about chicanos. Where does one belong when he/she does not belong to either place or belongs to both. Gloria Anzaldua talks about this state called "nepantla", which is like an in between state...kind of like limbo. I think its a really big issues that many chicanos deal with while trying to build their identity...obviously being chicano is a socially constructed identity that gives people from mexico living in the states, some identity. However, the idea of not wanting to fully assimilate to the american way of life and also trying to stay away from the traditional mexican norms (for women, for example) puts chicanos in a place where perhaps neither here nor there is good..which leaves them in this states of nepantla.

I hope the coming up books deals with feminism and space because for our class, these are important grounds to cover. and if we can throw a little Anzaldua in the way,,,that would be fabulous!!! happy thanksgiving!!!

mas de mis opiniones...

Bueno...me gusto mucho de lo que hablabamos en nuestro clase la ultima semana. Me parecio muy interesante que teniamos tantos diferente analizaciones del mismo parafo en el libro. Pero aunque tenia un opinion muy fija, los otros estudiantes cambiaron mi mente...entonces me parecio que la tema de religion fue muy importante en este libro. El protagonista esta desarrollando como una persona independiente durante el libro. En la segunda parte del libro empieza a questionar todo lo que esta pasando alrededor de el. La parte sobre los pecados del cuerpo me hizo pensar mucho en la corrupcion de la iglesia. Una parte que me hizo sentir muy raro y tambien creo que fue una manera muy sutil en decir que la iglesia tiene sus pecados tambien. "A la monjita le gustaba que dijeramos los pecados del cuerpo" (p.53). La primera imagen que entro mi mente era la violacion de los ninos por los padres. Me parece interesante que el narrador lo dijo con tanta traquilidad como si no fuera algo importante. Ademas la pareja que estaba "haciendo el amor" (o como quiere llamarlo) atras de la iglesia fue otro senal que la iglesia tambien es perversa (en su propia manera)...

Ademas creo que el nino, aunque al final del libro tal vez no llego a la realizacion, pero el empezo a entender que el dios y el diablo tiene poco que ver con lo que esta pasando a su rededor. Eso, le hace pensar mucho en los valores y tradiciones en que crecio, y creo que tambien como trata a ellos que le han dicho lo que ya estan mentiras para el ( tal vez mas dudas que mentiras). Que piensa el sobre todo lo que dijeron sus padres sobre la religion?

ps: sorry for the lack of accents ...dont have accents on this thing.... :)

y no se lo trago la tierra...

hmmm....my initial impression of this book...well i thought it was a little odd that it was a childrens novel. although i do understand that the child is the narrator however i found it hard to follow in terms of who and what was being talked about. I dont know if this happened to only me but i found in hard (at the same time interesting) that we don't know the narrato's name or those of his family. come to think of it...we rarely in the book hear about names. (only a few). that's why i found it a little complicated at times in terms of who they were talking about and to whom things were occuring. At the end of the book we see a lot of cursing which suprised me, as i heard that this was meant for children.

I also didn't quite get the rythym of the book. Like, sometimes it would talk about one event, then another, that had nothing to do with eachother. Other times he would start talking about something and then go back in time. There was a flow...but it was a weird one. Not the usual chronological order that we're all used too i guess..

Anyways, on the the contents of the book. I really enjoyed the little short stories that would be talked about. Although there was no major climax or action in the book, i thought it did a very good job in describing (from a child's point of view) the realities of working campesinos.. I noticed that it touched on religion a lot (from the devil, to the church, to cursing god) which was interesting to see because of the different situations the boy was in and how he viewed religion.

I feel that maybe it was fragmented stories because it was symbolic of their fragmented lives in a way. The fact that they always had to travel and weren't in one place for a long period of time is exaclty why the stories were short and there wasn't actually any response to any of them. they just happened. there was no follow up.

I think there's a lot more to this story that im still trying to piece together and im excited to here other people's opinions on it!!

what the hell???

um...........i had just a few issues with the first of this book about the "puente del Brooklyn." Besides the fact that i had to look up every second word, it was really hard for me to get through 5 pages the details of the Brooklyn bridge. And i dont mean to be hasty, because i too, appreciate detail and he de it very well, but why about something so dull (and yes it was dull) like a bridge. Im not sure why he wrote about the bridge but it did give off a goo image of the magnitude of the power in size of the bridge, and the effort it took by so many people to contstruct something that is so beyond our size. Im not sure what this has to do with chicanos though.

I think that the author has a very unique style in his writing as he observes everything he sees and uses a lot of comparison. When i read his writing he makes me feel like there is just so much going on. He talks alot about crowds and people and i just felt like the scene of "Gable" in New York was over crowded yet awkwardly glorious (if that makes any sense). anyways hopefully as i keep reading ill try to make some sense of what the author is trying to get at...

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...