Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Copyright © 2018

Borrowed from CLP on 8/17/22 to read for her interview at City of Asylum on August 23. NYT Editor’s Choice 2018 P. 210 https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/13364/fruit-of-the-drunken-tree She said this at Goodreads: I recommend the English version, which was the original. I wrote about my complicated relationship to English and Spanish and the writing of this novel in this essay: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/18/translation-as-an-arithmetic-of-loss/ She also said this about an invasión: An invasión would be land in which a displaced community would do a settlement. I heard this term used in Bogotá and some of Santander, the idea being that the government is the owner of the land, and that the displaced community seeking refuge in it are "invading." I thought it's an unkind term to talk about community needs of people who have been displaced, but wanted Chula, who is middle class, to use the term without "thought." A theme: what is the responsibility of those with choices to those without? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/books/review/ingrid-rojas-contreras-fruit-of-the-drunken-tree.html Petrona’s silence Like a statue Saint, poet, ghost, victim (of witchcraft, politics, poverty, machismo, and heartbreak) Extraordinary insight into the mind of a 9-year-old girl. Perhaps autobiographical - in which case an extraordinary imaginative flight into the circumstances of a 15-year-old from the invasión and her family. Wonderful rendition of the inscrutable actions and motivations of. Grownups from the p.o.v. of a 9-year-old girl. Many *homely* details (vividly specific) of observation Guilt feelings, 120-21, Orange hill, air, dirt, 179. How pregnancy disadvantages women and and reduces, if not eliminates, agency. How patriarchy and machismo spoil relationships and reduce, if not eliminate, agency. How the beaten women won’t tell on their abusers, reduces agency, How to maintain agency, power, p. 168 Chula has no one to turn to for information, for advice, for help 164 Superstition: Purgatory Spot, blessed souls, 25-26 menace of the dead stranger, 95 what a serious thing it was to swear on someone’s life, 100 counting your birth star, 120 (even chickens), reading life in the stars, 121 Palm reading 132 Spirit smoke causes asthma 158 Ghosts and guerrillas 172 Candle that doesn’t blow out 183 Tío Mauricio the witch 184-85 His snail shell to blame 192 Oligarch as witch 199 A dark saint 204, 219 Oligarch, oligarch’s mansion 27-28, target? 198 Chula, Mamá, Papá, Cassandra, Petrona, Mami, Papi, Ramón, Aurora, Ramón, Fernandito, Bernardo, Patricio, Umberto, Uriel Father, Tobias, Ricardo, taken by paramilitary 158 Questions: Did you take palo borracho and make it an almost magical thing? Are there really people like Petrona’s Papi? The effort to get to the U.S. reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (b. 1977 in Nigeria) short story, The American Embassy, but that one ended in failure due to the enervating grief of the protagonist.

At first the smile seems flat but the more I study it, the more it seems careless and irresponsible.

Petrona.

his cursed hand

it turns my ...

it falls exactly on the month my family and I fled from Colombia and arrived in L.A.,

I know exactly where and how he was conceived and that’s how I lose track of time, thinking it was my fault

Petrona was just fifteen when her belly was filled with bones,

Mamá

Simile

together we are quiet and sorry

Vía Corona in East L.A.,

How old is Chula now?

We were refugees when we arrived to the U.S.

They told us to strive for assimilation.

Who is “they”? Question

The U.S. was the land that saved us; Colombia was the land that saw us emerge.

Bitter sarcasm? Question. Right after “that fucking photograph.”

when I elevated my feet at night

of what country was I during those hours when my feet were in the air?

We understood how little we were worth, how small our claim in the world.

here was where I was supposed to think about the future, and how bright it might be,

Petrona,

I was fifteen like she had been the last ...

Petrona had dictated to Mamá back when we lived in Bogotá:

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20837/bogota/population

Petrona Sánchez

inv...

Chula Santiago,

Dear

Estoy leyendo Don Quixote.

Yay!

I could not stop thinking about everything we had lost.

Haha very smart

I never asked the one thing I wanted to know: Petrona, when we left, where did you go?

it arrived bringing with it all this wreckage to our doorstep.

Petrona

I was seven and my sister Cassandra was nine.

8 years ago

invasión.

government land taken over by the displaced and the poor.

Cassandra

Chula?

Mamá was a natural beauty.

“Is the girl Petrona trustworthy?”

Haha

she has the spirit of a mosquito.”

Simile metaphor

Mamá hired girls based on the urgency of their situation.

One girl had almost stolen Cassandra when she was a baby.

Simile brutal

The way Cassandra almost got kidnapped was a fun twist on an all too common story.

Haha - fun twist

it was all part of our family history.

Simile haha

Ours was a kingdom of women, with Mamá at the head, perpetually trying to find a fourth like us, or a fourth like her, a younger version of Mamá, poor and eager to climb out of poverty, on whom Mamá could right the wrongs she herself had endured.