Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me? (Chicana Matters)
by Barbara Renaud Gonzalez
Fly Away Home
A review by Mary Helen Ponce
Barbara Renaud Gonzalez's contribution
to the works on Mexican
immigration that in recent years
have dominated Chicano literature
could have been subtitled "Yearnings."
Each of her characters longs for an elusive something, whether romance,
a patrimony, a decent living or
"home"; each is convinced the dream
can be found across the border or
across the state line.
Like the migratory
swallow of the title, the
golondrina, the childbride
Amada Garcia flees
Mexico to escape a brutal
husband, abandoning her
toddler Salome, and
crosses the Rio Grande
into Texas. There, barely
across the border, she
marries Lazaro Mistral, a
Tejano who longs for the
land his ancestors lost after
the U.S.-Mexican War. The couple
endure exploitation and racism and together
build a large family, though
Amada's lifetime of labor is undercut
by her husband’s ancient rage. Sadly,
Amada's story is as common as tacos:
The Mexican immigrant experience is
one of disappointment, injustice, lowpaying
jobs and the threat of violence.
As Amada's dream fades, her children
seek their own place in
the sun. Lucero, her
eldest U.S.-born daughter,
pines for an education;
Salome, still in
Mexico and now a
mother of three, craves
a reunion with her longlost
mother.
Renaud Gonzalez's
debut novel reads like a
telenovela, minus the
happy ending: Women
suffer, pray to La Virgen
de Guadalupe for perseverance and,
like Amada, wait for a man (hopefully
handsome) to lift them from poverty.
Her details of the Texas panhandle's
harsh beauty are lyrical, and her intimate
acquaintance with the state's geography
and its flora and fauna is
most impressive, as is her vast knowledge
of the local vernacular and cuss
words. But because she often ignores
the writer's obligation to show rather
than tell, her book lacks an emotional
tone. Also problematic is her overuse
of Spanish. In early Chicano fiction it
was common to sprinkle one's work
with words en espanol as a sign of authenticity;
here it detracts from the
narrative flow, which could be frustrating
to the non-Spanish speaker.
Still, this native-born Tejana has
written convincingly of the hardships
Mexican American women faced in
post-World War II Texas -- and of the
need of the dispossessed to right old
wrongs.
Mary Helen Ponce is the author
of Hoyt Street: An Autobiography
(University of New Mexico Press,
1993).
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