Caramelo - Part 2 (May 2019)

[Marc]

This thread is for discussing Part 2.

How would you describe the shift from Part 1?
What is this book saying about storytelling?

(Feel free to ignore these questions and post your own questions or comments.)

[Hugh]

I am now well into part 2. I enjoyed the change in perspective, and the grandmother's interjections. There is a lot more history in this section, which is interesting. The contradictions between truth, legend and embroidery is a fertile theme, but one wonders how much the narrator has introduced her own angles.

[Lily]

Hugh wrote: "but one wonders how much the narrator has introduced her own angles....."

The point you are making, Hugh? Is that good or bad or ....?

[Hugh]

What I meant was whether Cisneros's narrator is meant to be any more truthful than other characters is not entirely clear yet. No value judgment intended...

[Mark]

Hee, she's pretty explicit that, as narrator, she's loading her dice as she sees fit. She even argues in favor of changing the story with her grandmother:

The world was filled with wind the day Narciso Reyes met Exaltacion Henestrosa.
Ha! That shows what you know. The winds in Oaxaca arrive only in the winter.
Well, let's pretend it's winter.
But you just finished saying it was the rainy season. Really!
All right. Just for poetic purposes, we'll allow the wind to arrive in
this scene. It suits the story better.

All the lighthearted dialogs with characters remind me of John Barth's Tidewater Tales, but perhaps with more discipline.

[Hugh]

Mark wrote: "Hee, she's pretty explicit that, as narrator, she's loading her dice as she sees fit. She even argues in favor of changing the story with her grandmother:

The world was filled with wind the day N..."

Well yes, but it is pretty clear that the grandmother's version is distorted too.

I liked "Who wants to hear about a nice person? The more terrible you are, the better the story. You'll see..."

[Mark]

Vivid language & sly humor:

God had been kind and bestowed an aura of melancholia about Inocencio Reyes, and this coupled with his intense eyes, dark as Narciso's but shaped like his mother Soledad's, like slouching houses, would bless Inocencio with the air of a poet or a martyred Sebastian without having had to undergo either torture.

The torture of a Poet? Cisneros would know.

Bilingual Hilarity:

Father sent away for the Ingles Sin Stress home course in English. He practiced, when speaking to his boss, -Gud mórning, ser. Or meeting a woman, -Jáu du iú du? If asked how he was coming along with his English lessons, -Veri uel, ɀhanc iú.

That's the funniest view of another language since David Sedaris's "Me Talk Pretty One Day": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXfzR...

[Lily]

Hugh wrote: "What I meant was whether Cisneros's narrator is meant to be any more truthful than other characters is not entirely clear yet. No value judgment intended..."

Thx for the clarification!

[Marc]

In Part I, Little Grandfather introduces Celaya to the concept of the "... healthy lie. Which sometimes we have to tell so that there won't be trouble." (This is when he lets her give her mole to the neighbors dog instead of eating it.)

This concept of the healthy lie gets extended beyond just avoiding trouble and becomes an integral tool to storytelling in Part II. There's not just a tacit acknowledgement that storytelling inherently involves some type of lie, but that it should be embraced and utilized to improve the story.

Despite the Awful Grandmother's many interjections and objections, what is your overall impression of how she feels about having her story told?

[Bretnie]

At times I found Awful Grandmother hilarious and badass, and other times I found her, well, awful. I did enjoy her interjections into the story!

[Kathleen]

I think the Awful Grandmother loves having her story told. I know I'm loving reading it!

I just got to the Josephine Baker chapter. Totally took me by surprise. :-)

I love how the narrator edits the "truth" to make a better story. This is so true to family stories, isn't it?

[Elaine]

I think Cisnero wants to bring out the similarity between fiction and history, that both are storytelling and skew the truth. It may be that the endnotes are to encourage drawing attention to the similarity, to blur the boundary. In any case, I like the mix of history. It substantiates the fiction.

[Marc]

The last couple comments make me think about the few times I've been at an event that got covered by a newspaper. When you read about something you've attended or experienced and you realize that the written account may be the only lasting or official account, you realize how subjective most stories are. I think that only gets amplified the more personal the story is to the teller/writer.