Abuela in Shadow, Abuela in Light

by Rigoberto González

Overview

Standing over two graves, Rigoberto González studies the names “Ramon” and “María” under the family name “González.” “She was María Carrillo, not María González,” he thinks. His grandmother is missing. So begins González’s memoir, a journey to recover a more complete picture of his grandmother, who raised him following his mother’s death.
 
González travels to his abuela’s birthplace, Michoacán, Mexico, and along the way recovers his memories of a past he had tried to leave behind. A complex woman who was forced to take on maternal roles and suffered years of abuse, his grandmother simultaneously resisted traditional gender roles; she was kind yet unaffectionate, and she kept many secrets in a crowded household with little personal space. Sifting through family histories and anecdotes, González pieces together the puzzling life story of a woman who was present in her grandson’s life yet absent during his emotional journey as a young man discovering his sexuality and planning his escape from a toxic and abusive environment.
 
From fragments of memory and story, González ultimately creates a portrait of an unconventional yet memorable grandmother, a hard-working Indigenous Mexican woman who remained an enigma while she was alive. A grandmother, he shows, is more than what her descendants remember; she is also all that has been forgotten or never known. Through this candid exploration of his own family, González explores how we learn to remember and honor those we’ve lost.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299337681
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Series:	Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiography Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	184
File size:	901 KB

About the Author

Rigoberto González, distinguished professor of English and director of the MFA program in creative writing at Rutgers University-Newark, is the author of eighteen books of poetry and prose. Recipient of the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award, and Lannan, Guggenheim, USA Rolón, and NEA fellowships, he was the finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for a previous memoir, What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth.

Table of Contents

Contents
 
Unrest
Abuela’s Photographs
Sanctuary
First Interlude: The Wonder Woman T-Shirt
Ancestry
Mañosos
Patron Saint of the Cupcake
Second Interlude: Adolescence with a Wall in It
Sounds at Night
Vanity
Roadside Chat
Third Interlude: Class of ’88
A Box of Ash
Separation
Fieldwork
 
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

01/31/2022

PEN/Voelcker Award–winning poet González (The Book of Ruin) sifts through his complicated heritage to present a moving and lyrical tribute to his grandmother, an Indigenous Mexican woman of the Purépecha people. In 1988 at age 17, González left his home in the Coachella Valley for college, distancing himself from the years of sexual abuse he endured by his older cousin and embracing the queer identity he hid from his family. Eventually, though, a desire to “recover the woman I had left behind” brought him back to the roots of his abuela, who had died in 2011, more than two decades after González moved away. In contemplative passages braided with his grandmother’s native language, González reflects on the impenetrable woman he lived with as a teenager following his mother’s death. Despite “challeng the depictions of those matronly, domestic older ladies we watched on Mexican telenovelas,” she suffered years of abuse at the hands of her husband, which left her “emotionally detached” and indifferent to her grandson’s own physical and psychological pain. No real reconciliation is given in González’s elegiac narrative, but there’s much wisdom to be found in his story of intergenerational silence and the “unresolved” pasts one inherits. Pain begets beauty in this poignant family reckoning. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Abuela in Shadow, Abuela in Light is medicine for readers who, like Rigoberto González, have come out of backgrounds froth with intergenerational poverty, domestic violence, and unspoken sexual abuse. Now ‘middle-aged,’ González shows in his latest memoir that recovery is possible when one is willing to confront the past, present, and even what may come with honesty, compassion, and without assigning blame, especially to oneself.”—Ana Castillo, author of Black Dove

“A poignant homage to the author’s Indigenous grandmother as well as an exploration of deep-seated family abuse. . . . The narrative moves in thematic segments, gradually revealing a tender kinship between the hard-shelled abuela and the empathetic author—a precious connection amid a family scarred by domestic violence and intergenerational poverty. An alternately touching and shocking narrative.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A moving and lyrical tribute. . . . No real reconciliation is given in González’s elegiac narrative, but there’s much wisdom to be found in his story of intergenerational silence and the ‘unresolved’ pasts one inherits. Pain begets beauty in this poignant family reckoning.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2022-01-25
A poignant homage to the author’s Indigenous grandmother as well as an exploration of deep-seated family abuse.

González, a professor of English and creative writing and the author of numerous books of poetry and the acclaimed memoir What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth, recalls his early upbringing in Michoacán, among his extended family, and “the government housing I grew up in, the Fred Young Farm Labor Camp—or El Campo, as it was commonly known.” Because his mother died when the author was 12 and his alcoholic father abandoned him and his brother, Alex, he was raised largely by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother, María Carrillo, who died in 2011, was not “the typical Mexican grandmother.” Rather, he writes, she was “one of a kind—a woman who challenged the depictions of those matronly, domestic older ladies we watched on Mexican telenovelas, las abuelitas.” María, a Purépecha, worked hard in the grape fields well into her old age while at the same time enduring physical abuse by her brutish husband. As González recounts, it’s also likely she had been sexually abused as a child, as had many girls and boys in the author’s extended family. The U.S.–born author was one of the many boisterous grandchildren and cousins who came to inhabit his grandparents’ house, largely for economic reasons. Sleeping on floors and sharing small spaces, González became prey to older cousins and uncles who sexually abused him. Only later in life, now a successful, independent gay man, did he hear from his female cousins that the abuse he suffered also happened to them. The narrative moves in thematic segments, gradually revealing a tender kinship between the hard-shelled abuela and the empathetic author—a precious connection amid a family scarred by domestic violence and intergenerational poverty.

An alternately touching and shocking narrative of a dysfunctional yet resilient Mexican American family.

Kirkus Reviews