Bibliofreakblog

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

Have you ever seen Sandra Cisneros read?  If you can, you should.  She’s super cute, with a voice that’s almost but not quite shrill, and has so much energy you say to whomever is sitting next to you, “how old is she?”

I bring this up because I’ve seen her read twice, once in the fall of 2003 at the University of Michigan and once in 2004 at the AWP conference in her hometown of Chicago (where, let me tell you, she was the darling of the conference).  Both times were in support of her book, Caramelo, which had just come out in paperback.

Caramelo is Cisneros’ only full-length novel to date.  Many of the details come from her own life and family, though it is fiction.  

The narrator, Lala, grows up in Chicago and Texas, the lone girl among six brothers.  Her father and uncles are upholsterers, who drag their families back to Mexico City every summer to visit their mother–the Awful Grandmother.  

There are many Jungian sort of elements to the story–such as the characters of the Awful Grandmother and the Little Grandfather, but it is in no way written in a Magical Realism style common to many Spanish-speaking authors.  In fact, it is incredibly realistic–down to the little details of dialogue and laughter.  

As Lala grows older, she meets a boy, for whom she falls head over heels.  They runaway to be married, but in many ways it seems as though history is doomed to repeat itself.  For even though this is a story about a young woman, in many senses it is the story of mothers and sons.

If you like this book/author, you might like:

Love in the Time of Cholera (F) by Gabriel Garcia Lopez
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (F) by Oscar Hijuelos
Dark Dude (F) by Oscar Hijuelos 
Mexico (F) by James Michener
Like Water for Chocolate (F) by Laura Esquivel
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent (F) by Julia Alvarez
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (F) by Junot Díaz
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (CNF) by Gloria Anzaldúa
Bodega Dreams (F) by Ernesto Quinonez
The House of Spirits (F) by Isabel Allende
The Help (F) by Katheryn Stockett

Other works by Sandra Cisneros:

Woman Hollering Creek (F)
House on Mango Street (F)
Loose Woman (P)
My Wicked Ways (P)
Hairs/Pelitos (F)