Bordes, Bastards, Conversaciones and Criticism

It has a been a jolly good run, and I think that this class was the most intriguing and hands-on I've experienced at this institute of humanitarian holiness. The debates were heated, the participants were enthusiastic, and the relatively unswingable Swingspace began to oscillate like an overweight Cuban in a hammock! From the eloquence of Burton to the bloodiness of Cisneros, we experienced an array of literature that evoked every emotion from boredom to borderline insanity.

The wikipedia project was one of special importance to me, for I have used the tool before so in such a self-centered fashion that it felt only necessary that I give back to the community, even though the GA reviewers can be pretentious, but they damn well should, those selfless cats.

The class became increasingly sexy during our discussions in Spanish, where the language rebounded off the walls in a way I hadn't experienced before in my dreary grammatical Spanish classes in the past.

Latin America now is given a new life in my eyes, as before it was almost just an area on the map, but now I'm able to comprehend the difficulties and the beauty of life there. Most of all, I'm impressed with the intellect with our class, everyone raised interesting points and shared points of view that contrasted with everyone else's, and I'm grateful to have experienced a class where participation is encouraged rather than discouraged, which often times it is.

Identity was covered in great detail, from so many perspectives that I myself am confused as to what I am, except a white male born in Canada. In a way, I'm envious of Latino strong sense of being something, or even having a struggle in deciding what they are.

Remember it!

I find myself bound in appreciation of the legitimacy of Rodriguez's story. It is, without a doubt, an intimate portrayal of family life, personal emotions, and conflict within a person who has been given no opportunity to anticipate assimilation.

While I often find many emotional narrations of authors to be more or less contrived, hers do not seem to be so. Though I may disagree with certain sentiments concerning our acceptance of foreigners in Vancouver, I cannot argue with or against the immigrant experience within this context.

That being said, her use of metaphor in "Black Hole" is one I can only appreciate at an emotional level, not an artistic one. While the sentiment of blackness and morbidity may manifest itself in her, I find it a tad too generic to be one I might consider compelling on a literary level. I don't mean to sound arrogant, and I don't think that my view is compulsory, but the "black hole" concept is one I associate with a lack of objectivity and irrational negativity.

Of course, her story is still a personal one despite the more broad aspects of it. Descriptions of torture are powerful regardless of context, and I did feel a painful discomfort while reading them.

As in Alvarez's novel, the book straddles the line between autobiography and fiction, but obviously this book does not amount to a start-to-finish, or rather finish-to-start method. However, I take this book as a more literal approach to immigration and political exile than that of Alvarez's, in that it is more black and white and less personal. Alvarez combined politics and identity with a coming of age tale, while this is more of a fragmented telling of events within less plausible characters. It is, I find, less personal that How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, though probably more factual in content.

I've always thought that Vancouver was a place where art wasn't recognized, but Rodriguez gives me hope!

To habla or not to habla, that is the question

If I've there's a book that disproves Oscar Wilde's assertion that art materializes solely from the mind of the artist with incredible but unintentional conviction, it's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. It comes off as so autobiographical that I have difficulty analyzing these characters, wondering: Were these created from the author's mind to serve a purpose? Or are they present simply because they were present?

I have little doubt in my mind that the numerous cousins, such as that materialistic one from the beginning that criticizes Yolanda's hair, and Mundi, the good childhood friend are entirely non-fictional and existed in Alvarez's life. So, why all the detail, intimate descriptions of life in the Dominican, life in the USA, and the thoughts in minds of people experiencing both lives when the book ends in such a surreal, hyperpersonal admission of guilt? Guilt is too broad of a term to use, because the ending exudes various trains of thought and emotion: those of nostalgia, self-pity, confusion of a child, and those of a confused adult whose confusion remains childhood confusion.

The ending punctuates my belief of its autobiographical nature when this strange cat, a metaphor for Alvarez's concern of potential literary and personal criticism both by herself and others stalks her throughout the final chapter. This cat can be substituted as a supernatural force that somehow enters the seemingly impregnable house. Evidently this haunting icon is not a physical force but a mental one, creeping the mind of Alvarez in her youth and in her adulthood, justifying the intimicacy with which we get to know her Yolanda. She cites "At that hour of loneliness, I hear her, that black furried thing lurking in the corners of my life, her magenta mouth opening, wailing over some violation that lies at the center of my art." Alvarez experiences guilt for creating a work that straddles the border between fiction and non-fiction as haphazardly as her characters do.

I don't think there is any critical middleground to why Alvarez employs such a strange chronology, the book is still art and thus doesn't require an explanation for the style with which it presents itself. I don't feel she did it to better convey the nature of the characters, because now that I've read the second half of the book, I have difficulty critiquing them with any presumptions I previously made! The characters of the second half don't really think any of the same thoughts as the ones from the beginning. I felt like I was reading two different books...the first half concerning the themes we've all agreed upon such as identity, assimilation, fragmented self etc. and the second half seemed more a study of morality and the texture of childhood minds.

I find that Alvarez's style is extremely visceral and foreign all at once, for her method of intertwining small remarks about tomboyism and childhood mindset with political unrest and Dominican culture leave me feeling distant and close to her writing. After reading numerous scholarly articles on the book I feel that I should be mentioning some of the incredibly complex allusions and social commentaries these academics accuse her of making, but because I never would've recognized what "should not be considered post-colonial uncelebrated discourse from a dehistoricized concept of cultural hybridity" I will not.

With regard to why Yolanda was institutionalized, I think it was her narcissicism that drove her insane, not America.

Dude, where's my accent?

I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon of people who think this is the most enjoyable read in the class so far, but it is in fact the most enjoyable read in the class so far, with the exception of the easy going Marti excerpts.

With Alvarez being my wikipedia project, I can certainly detect the autobiographical nature of this novel, especially within the character of Yolanda. Yolanda's poetic musings and genius can easily be attributed to those of Alvarez's, which I believe is how the character's thoughts are so incredibly believable to the point that I feel like I'm reading someone's memoirs.

A wonderful break from the relentless feminism of Cisneros, I find that How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents can be read with or without a social context. It is a pleasurable read whether you choose to read it as cultural/political commentary or just character studies and commentary on certain personalities. It is so enjoyable in fact one might forget the contexts altogether and just read it as if it were a storybook.

You could call it magic realism, not in the sense of the literary term, but in Alvarez's ability to capture reality in such a way it would appear to be unrealistic to attempt such a feat. I've never had sisters or even multiple siblings but Alvarez makes the idea of having this large family quite appealing; they're best friends who have everything and nothing in common all once. From the strange Freudian scene where the daughters are kissing the around and blindfolded father to the super horny college b/f Rudy, Alvarez seems to effortlessly capture the psychology and thoughts of men even though as far as we know she is not a man at all. Again, a lovely break from the evil faceless male characters I had to endure throughout Woman Hollering Creek.

Love, in this book, has a face as well, perhaps not completely defined, but is investigated not just in the Latin sense but between two distinct personalities, for e.g. the relationship between Yolanda and John. Yolanda by page 100 has already shown she asserts herself not just as a woman but as an individual by not having sex with Rudy nor with John during that sweaty humid night. She has such an ability to listen to the better side of her conscience and ability to resist temptation she has nothing in common with traditional female figures like Eve of Eden, a character in a book she still latches onto with a strange guilt or religious confusion.

Blah blah blah, I could go all night about how great this book is.