The following notes are taken from both lectures at UCLA and my own personal observations from reading In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. I hope they help!
Told in three parts, the first two in which the Mirabels are characterized and the last in which they meet their demise.
The Mirabels are upper-middle class/ successful. Dad is a rancher, they own a store and pops is an assistant to a governor. They’ve got enough money and swing for the girls to be educated at seminary schools.
The class is supposed to be supporting the regime, and out of that class comes the most powerful opposition.
The girls are humble, hardworking. The huge plantations like the ones that the Mirabels have are the homes of the wealthy, and these people do not generally live in an urban setting. They are privileged people but they are not snobby.
Fela, their servant, is of African descent. She is also a valued member of their family unit, beloved by Mate who frequently looks to her for help, guidance and advice
There is going to be a real element of guilt here, that Dede survived while all the other died. Survivors generally do not want to talk about their experiences, and they often go through post-traumatic stress.
Minerva is a goddess of war or wisdom. That’s lucky for Alvarez. She has an indomitable spirit, she seeks freedom, both from the culture and from the regime. She slaps Trujillo in the face. She’s compassionate.
Mate is sensitive and scary. What are her motivations? Minerva is an intellectual, Patra does it to help the people, Mate does it for love.
The character is minutely crafted, she does an expert job of creating both interior and exterior portraits of these women.
The eventual martyrdom by survival for Dede is fascinating. All the important structural sections of the novel are introduced by Dede; while she doesn’t have the heroic stature of her sisters, she confesses that she’s scared to do the things her sisters do. It’s not about her husband, as she says at some times.
She’s not cowardly, she’s just a human being who recognizes a serious danger in her midst. She realizes when her sisters are taken away that she is a part of the revolution whither or not she wants to be. The careful reader would be more likely to identify with Dede, Alvarez had to retrieve the other characters from heroic and mythical proportions, which Dede was exempt from in a sense.
This humanization is evident in Minerva’s need to keep the appearance of strength up after she’s released from jail. She’s afraid, but she doesn’t want to let people down, and she knows that she’s become the icon of the revolution, so she smiles instead of weeping.
Women in Latin America do not often forage ahead in the world of men the way that the
Mirabels did. Feminists challenge the norms or the traditions that define the roles of women. Alvarez appropriates the language of religion to subtly subvert the roles of the genders within the story, with Patria taking on the role of a Jesus figure, and Trujillo’s self-deification.
When the women are jailed, they realize that they are sisters with the women who share their cell- the murderers and prostitutes are scary to them at first, but it doesn’t take much time for them to become a group.
The testimony approach to telling the story of the murders was the most realistic narrative trick she could have used. Witnesses are notoriously unreliable, but these people bring back what they remember and what they know about the facts of the situation. Here, the various voices bring back the perspective of the situation, but as the women are dead, they can’t tell the story themselves.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
Influenced by magical realism, the story follows four women over three generations of a family, some in Cuba and some away from it, but all effected by it. (Celia, Lourdes, Felicia & Pilar). Narrative shifts every chapter or so to allow a look into the minds and lives of each character, including some of the male ones.
Felicia’s madness is likely the result of syphilis traveling into her brain. She leaves a trail of maimed/dead husbands in her wake.
The women are divided over the revolution; Lourdes leaves Cuba after the rise of Castro, rejecting communism in favor of stanch capitalism (opening the Yankee Doodle Bakery in NY) while Celia becomes a sort of district arbitrator, earning power under Castro’s government.
Celia’s letters to her lost love, Gustavo, advance the plot, add dates to the action and allow access to her inner thoughts, becoming a journal. It seems the letters are never sent or replied to, lending credence to the journal concept.
Pilar, as an immigrant to the US, belongs to neither culture. She feels drawn to Cuba but once she goes there she understands she doesn’t belong. She joins the punk rock movement and strives to become an artist, perhaps hoping to paint a corner of the world for herself to reside in.
An undercurrent of racial issues reside here, as the darkness of a person’s skin directly equates to their status within the Cuban society.
Garcia is NOT a CHICANA, I repeat, NOT A CHICANA. She’s Cuban.
She uses the magic of Santeria to move the plot along, it brings to mind the interesting nature of the mestiza culture creating by the merging of Anglo religion with indigenous religion.
Felicia’s madness is likely the result of syphilis traveling into her brain. She leaves a trail of maimed/dead husbands in her wake.
The women are divided over the revolution; Lourdes leaves Cuba after the rise of Castro, rejecting communism in favor of stanch capitalism (opening the Yankee Doodle Bakery in NY) while Celia becomes a sort of district arbitrator, earning power under Castro’s government.
Celia’s letters to her lost love, Gustavo, advance the plot, add dates to the action and allow access to her inner thoughts, becoming a journal. It seems the letters are never sent or replied to, lending credence to the journal concept.
Pilar, as an immigrant to the US, belongs to neither culture. She feels drawn to Cuba but once she goes there she understands she doesn’t belong. She joins the punk rock movement and strives to become an artist, perhaps hoping to paint a corner of the world for herself to reside in.
An undercurrent of racial issues reside here, as the darkness of a person’s skin directly equates to their status within the Cuban society.
Garcia is NOT a CHICANA, I repeat, NOT A CHICANA. She’s Cuban.
She uses the magic of Santeria to move the plot along, it brings to mind the interesting nature of the mestiza culture creating by the merging of Anglo religion with indigenous religion.
Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana by Demetria Martinez
The following is ripped straight from my notes from lectures at UCLA from Prof. Limon, as well as some of my own observations about Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana by Demetria Martinez. I hope these notes are helpful in suggesting things to look for as you read the text.
Martinez’ essay collection is a great example of what it means to live in a rapidly shifting society; in the new millennium, ideas of health, wealth, science and religion change as quickly as the skies over New England. Further, Martinez layers the issues of being female over these other complex topics, as well as the questions of living on the Frontera
It’s a series of funny personal essays. Well, not all of them are funny but the memorable ones are. She talks about human rights issues in the US: meal vouchers to give the homeless in lieu of spare change, universal health care, the debate over the use of the Spanish language in schools, the divide between those who are “more Mexican than you” and the standard issue Chicana.
She debates the choice of title in an essay called “By Any Other Name,” deciding in turn to be Latina “to promote pan-American unity”, Mexican because she likes that it “makes people flinch” also Mexican American caz everybody else is one, and Hispanic is fine in general for those who “couldn't’t care less about the debate over naming but who know they’d better get out and vote because right now they are screwed: low wages, substandard education, no health insurance, over-represented in prisons and military uniforms.”
Martinez’ essay collection is a great example of what it means to live in a rapidly shifting society; in the new millennium, ideas of health, wealth, science and religion change as quickly as the skies over New England. Further, Martinez layers the issues of being female over these other complex topics, as well as the questions of living on the Frontera
It’s a series of funny personal essays. Well, not all of them are funny but the memorable ones are. She talks about human rights issues in the US: meal vouchers to give the homeless in lieu of spare change, universal health care, the debate over the use of the Spanish language in schools, the divide between those who are “more Mexican than you” and the standard issue Chicana.
She debates the choice of title in an essay called “By Any Other Name,” deciding in turn to be Latina “to promote pan-American unity”, Mexican because she likes that it “makes people flinch” also Mexican American caz everybody else is one, and Hispanic is fine in general for those who “couldn't’t care less about the debate over naming but who know they’d better get out and vote because right now they are screwed: low wages, substandard education, no health insurance, over-represented in prisons and military uniforms.”
La Frontera (the Borderlands) By Gloria Anzaldua
The follow text is ripped straight from my notes from lecture at UCLA, under Professor Limon, as well as some of my own observations from the text. I hope you can use these notes in your studies, and as suggestions of what to look for as you read La Frontera By Gloria Anzaldua.
The text is a manifesto of feminism, chicana-ry, written as poetry, reworked history and personal essay. Anzaldua asserts that the border is the place where the “third world grates against the first and bleeds.”
The border is an arbitrary line, it “crossed her” meaning that she never came here, her people were here already. She traces the lineage of the indigenous people of North and South America to Aztlan, a place historians think may have existed somewhere near Mexico city.
She often writes in Spanish, sometimes offering a side-by-side translation or lines that follow and explain what she’s written in English, but she writes in Spanish because she is refusing to subjugate her own language. Essentially she’s arguing that Spanish is not a “deficient language.”
She talks about the various forms of language that spring up on the borders, being a pocho, she speaks a sort of polluted Spanish unique to Chicanos. She further assesses that Chicanos speak no fewer than eight versions total of English and Spanish in their daily lives, however she refuses to believe that she speaks Spanish poorly. This type of idea is a distinction often made along class lines, coming from the more landed or wealthy folks in Mexico, down to the working poor there allowing them to feel better than the Chicanos across the border. There is a solid ideological link between Ethnic identity and language for Anzaldua.
Anzaldua was audacious in her time, blasting the patriarchy and writing openly about the acquisition of Mexican gods, like Coatlicue, and their transformation into the Virgin de Guadeloupe, La Lorena and Malinche (the raped mother). Before the Spanish, the people of South America passed property through maternal lines, this included royal power.
She exposes the underbelly of the culture, the tendency to treat women as disposable articles. Beating a woman is a behavior in line with tradition; it is the responsibility of the man of the house to punish a wayward female.
She asserts that women have three places in her culture, nun, prostitute or mother. The ability to serve a man is a woman’s highest virtue; however the Anglo culture prizes ambition in both men and women.
The imagery of snakes: used as phallic symbols by Anzaldua, but also utilized to highlight the difference between an Anglo interpretation of the symbol and an Aztec one. Snakes in the OG tradition of South America were animals of the earth and the underworld, symbols of infinity and linked with Shamanism and magic. Anzaldua links the magic of the snake to the magical creation process of writing.
The text is a manifesto of feminism, chicana-ry, written as poetry, reworked history and personal essay. Anzaldua asserts that the border is the place where the “third world grates against the first and bleeds.”
The border is an arbitrary line, it “crossed her” meaning that she never came here, her people were here already. She traces the lineage of the indigenous people of North and South America to Aztlan, a place historians think may have existed somewhere near Mexico city.
She often writes in Spanish, sometimes offering a side-by-side translation or lines that follow and explain what she’s written in English, but she writes in Spanish because she is refusing to subjugate her own language. Essentially she’s arguing that Spanish is not a “deficient language.”
She talks about the various forms of language that spring up on the borders, being a pocho, she speaks a sort of polluted Spanish unique to Chicanos. She further assesses that Chicanos speak no fewer than eight versions total of English and Spanish in their daily lives, however she refuses to believe that she speaks Spanish poorly. This type of idea is a distinction often made along class lines, coming from the more landed or wealthy folks in Mexico, down to the working poor there allowing them to feel better than the Chicanos across the border. There is a solid ideological link between Ethnic identity and language for Anzaldua.
Anzaldua was audacious in her time, blasting the patriarchy and writing openly about the acquisition of Mexican gods, like Coatlicue, and their transformation into the Virgin de Guadeloupe, La Lorena and Malinche (the raped mother). Before the Spanish, the people of South America passed property through maternal lines, this included royal power.
She exposes the underbelly of the culture, the tendency to treat women as disposable articles. Beating a woman is a behavior in line with tradition; it is the responsibility of the man of the house to punish a wayward female.
She asserts that women have three places in her culture, nun, prostitute or mother. The ability to serve a man is a woman’s highest virtue; however the Anglo culture prizes ambition in both men and women.
The imagery of snakes: used as phallic symbols by Anzaldua, but also utilized to highlight the difference between an Anglo interpretation of the symbol and an Aztec one. Snakes in the OG tradition of South America were animals of the earth and the underworld, symbols of infinity and linked with Shamanism and magic. Anzaldua links the magic of the snake to the magical creation process of writing.
Making Literature Notes Public Domain
For the past two years, I've been an undergrad in UCLA's English Department. Depending on the class, I often run into problems finding notes on the books I'm asked to read. This is generally true when I'm studying modern literature, which is the case for many of my classes. I find that the notes that are available to me online are often geared towards helping students cheat (by offering papers for pay, or synopsis for those who don't read the books) rather than helpful notes to enable better and more complete readings.
What I've wanted to find are notes on themes, characterizations, commonalities to other texts, and unique perspectives from thoughtful readers. I am not interested in cutting and pasting text from Wikipedia into my papers, and I hope you aren't either! For that reason, I'm not going to include page numbers or any specifics that you can use in your essays, I'll let you find your own support, but I'll help you find some interesting things to look for.
I'm in finals week right now of my second to last quarter at UCLA, so I don't think I'll be posting here forever, but hopefully my observations will be useful to future students. If there are other thoughtful students out there who would like to contribute, please feel free to email me at rachel.beezy88@gmail.com as I'd love to get a lot of information out there to students.
What I've wanted to find are notes on themes, characterizations, commonalities to other texts, and unique perspectives from thoughtful readers. I am not interested in cutting and pasting text from Wikipedia into my papers, and I hope you aren't either! For that reason, I'm not going to include page numbers or any specifics that you can use in your essays, I'll let you find your own support, but I'll help you find some interesting things to look for.
I'm in finals week right now of my second to last quarter at UCLA, so I don't think I'll be posting here forever, but hopefully my observations will be useful to future students. If there are other thoughtful students out there who would like to contribute, please feel free to email me at rachel.beezy88@gmail.com as I'd love to get a lot of information out there to students.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)