2021-03-23
In these collected short fictional pieces, multiple narrators tell the story of a Mexican American family.
Sisters Paloma and Sofía “Chofi” Martinez are first-generation Americans; their parents, Francisco Martinez Castillo and Maria Helena Ramirez de Avila, were born in Michoacán, Mexico. In the United States, Francisco and Helena work hard at jobs available to illiterate migrants, as a seamstress or a construction laborer, for example. They move to the Los Angeles area, achieving home ownership and urging their daughters to attend college. Growing up, the girls make a practice of telling their dreams every morning. As their mother says, “Share them out loud with your eyes wide open, so your dreams can guide you through the world of the living.” Usually narrated by Chofi, the short chapters present vignettes following the sisters’ coming-of-age and the family fortunes. They attend school, gain a baby brother, learn to mambo, enjoy feasts and holidays, visit Mexico, deal with maturing bodies and feelings, spread their wings in college, and plan careers—Paloma as an accountant, Chofi as a journalist. Over time, they witness the sad decline of their father into alcoholism and rage. In her second book, Gutiérrez poetically conveys the Chicano/Chicana experience, often through vivid sensory details. A Tijuana marketplace, for example, presents a bright mosaic of “molcajetes, loterias, pinto beans, Peruvian beans, and tamarindo.” While experience rests on sensations and solid actions (making a living, a meal, clothing), the power of stories and dreams forges links to the sacred. Chofi’s troubled cousin Beto, for example, has tattoos she doesn’t find threatening because they connect with “the crosses, the thorns, paintings, and statues at churches. Like a church, he decorates his body with memories of pain.”
Vignettes that poignantly evoke heritage and growth.
