Synopses & Reviews
DISPONIBLE POR PRIMERA VEZ EN EBOOK
La célebre autora de La casa en Mango Street, nos ofrece una nueva y extraordinaria novela narrada en un lenguaje de una originalidad arro-lladora: es la historia de varias generaciones de una familia méxicoamericana cuyas voces crean un des-lumbrante y vivo tapiz de humor y de pasión, hecho con la esencia misma de la vida.
La abuela de Lala Reyes es descendiente de una familia de afamados reboceros. El rebozo de rayas color caramelo es el más bello de todos y aquél que llega a pertenecer a Lala, al igual que la historia familiar que éste representa. La novela comienza con el viaje anual en automóvil de los Reyes—una caravana desbordante de niños, risas y pleitos— desde Chicago hasta el «otro lado»: la Ciudad de México. Es aquí que Lala cada año escucha las historias de su familia y trata de separar la verdad de las «mentiras sanas» que han resonado de una generación a otra. Viajamos desde la Ciudad de México, que era el «París del Nuevo Mundo» a las calles llenas de música de Chicago en los albores de los locos años veinte y, finalmente, a la difícil adolescencia de Lala en la tierra no tan exactamente prometida de San Antonio, Texas.
Caramelo es una historia sabia, vital y romántica, sobre el lugar de origen, algunas veces real, algu-nas veces imaginado. Vívida, graciosa, íntima e histórica, es una obra brillante destinada a convertirse en un clásico: una nueva novela de gran importancia de una de las escritoras más queridas de nuestro país.
Synopsis
In Spanish/ en Español
Every year, Ceyala "Lala" Reyes' family--aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, and Lala's six older brothers--packs up three cars and, in a wild ride, drive from Chicago to the Little Grandfather and Awful Grandmother's house in Mexico City for the summer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothers and to understand her place on this side of the border and that, Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she starts telling the Awful Grandmother's life story, seeking clues to how she got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating. Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwind exploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished rebozo, or shawl, that has been passed down through generations of Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history, family, and love.
Synopsis
La c lebre autora de La casa en Mango Street, y ganadora del PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature 2018, nos ofrece una nueva y extraordinaria novela narrada en un lenguaje de una originalidad arro-lladora: es la historia de varias generaciones de una familia m xicoamericana cuyas voces crean un des-lumbrante y vivo tapiz de humor y de pasi n, hecho con la esencia misma de la vida.
La abuela de Lala Reyes es descendiente de una familia de afamados reboceros. El rebozo de rayas color caramelo es el m s bello de todos y aqu l que llega a pertenecer a Lala, al igual que la historia familiar que ste representa. La novela comienza con el viaje anual en autom vil de los Reyes--una caravana desbordante de ni os, risas y pleitos-- desde Chicago hasta el «otro lado la Ciudad de M xico. Es aqu que Lala cada a o escucha las historias de su familia y trata de separar la verdad de las «mentiras sanas que han resonado de una generaci n a otra. Viajamos desde la Ciudad de M xico, que era el «Par s del Nuevo Mundo a las calles llenas de m sica de Chicago en los albores de los locos a os veinte y, finalmente, a la dif cil adolescencia de Lala en la tierra no tan exactamente prometida de San Antonio, Texas.
Caramelo es una historia sabia, vital y rom ntica, sobre el lugar de origen, algunas veces real, algu-nas veces imaginado. V vida, graciosa, ntima e hist rica, es una obra brillante destinada a convertirse en un cl sico: una nueva novela de gran importancia de una de las escritoras m s queridas de nuestro pa s.
About the Author
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of the novels The House on Mango Street and Caramelo, a collection of short stories Woman Hollering Creek, a book of poetry Loose Woman, and a children's book Hairs/Pelitos. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Reading Group Guide
1. From the novels opening epigraph—“Tell me a story, even it its a lie”—to its end, the relationship between truth, lies, history, and storytelling is an important theme. Posits Celaya, “Did I dream it or did someone tell me the story? I cant remember where the truth ends and the talk begins” [p. 20]. And while she is assuring us, “I wish I could tell you about this episode in my familys history, but nobody talks about it, and I refuse to invent what I dont know” [p. 134], she also acknowledges, “The same story becomes a different story depending on who is telling it” [p. 156]. For example, clearly the Awful Grandmother is sugarcoating the truth about her marriage to Narciso [p. 171]. What other aspects of the novel are evidently “untruthful”? Is the reader to believe that
Caramelo is just a “different kind of lie” [p. 246]?
2. Celaya says, “Im not ashamed of my past. Its the story of my life Im sorry about” [p. 399]. Whats the difference?
3. The narrative transitions from one storytellers point of view, or voice, to anothers in different parts of the story. For example, in Chapter 22, Celaya as the storyteller engages in a dialogue with the Awful Grandmother about the way the grandmothers story is being told [pp. 91-123]. Then, in Chapter 29, Narciso begins to tell his own story of when he lived in Chicago [p. 137]. And later, in Chapters 37-45, the dialogue between Celaya and the Awful Grandmother returns. Celaya seems to find her own voice and point of view in Chapter 59. What does the author achieve by shifting the viewpoint from character to character? How does the tone change to reflect the voices of a poor Mexican orphan, a young officer in the Mexican army, an American teenage girl, and others? How does this narrative device affect the readers ability to sympathize or empathize with the characters?
4. Often elements of one persons life are echoed later in the story, in either the same characters life or in another characters. For example, Cisneros uses the same sentence—“And it was good and joyous and blessed”—to describe Grandmothers first sexual encounter with Narciso [p. 154] and later her death [p. 348]. And the argument between Mother and Celaya [p. 359] echoes the earlier argument between Aunty Light-Skin and the Awful Grandmother [p. 262]. Where are there other examples of this repetition within the novel? What themes does this structural repetition help convey?
5. The family history that forms the central story line of Caramelo is structured in part chronologically and in part by the relationships formed by different family members. As our narrator informs us: “Because a life contains a multitude of stories and not a single strand explains precisely the who of who one is, we have to examine the complicated loops that allowed Regina to become la Señora Reyes” [p. 115]. Does this nonlinear plot structure support the assertion that family and history are without beginning, middle, or end, but are, rather, a “pattern” [p. 399]?
6. How does the historical chronology at the end of the novel edify the Reyes family events that take place within the body of the narrative—and vice versa? In other words, since the reader probably read the story before the chronology, how do the fictional family events illuminate the factual chronology of United States and Mexican history? Is Caramelo like or different from other historical fictions, such as Alex Haleys Roots, with which the reader might be familiar?
7. The theme expressed in the following statement is reemphasized throughout the novel: “We are all born with our destiny. But sometimes we have to help our destiny a little” [p. 106]. For example, Viva tells Celaya: “I believe in destiny as much as you do, but sometimes youve gotta help your destiny along” [p. 345]. What exactly is the nature or power of the “destiny” that the characters seem to revere? Who or what is really in control of the lives and histories portrayed? How is destiny different for Celaya, her grandmother, her parents, and her friend Viva? Celaya says of Ernesto: “He was my destiny, but not my destination” [p. 399]. What is the difference?
8. How does the oft-repeated phrase “just enough, but not too much” [e.g., p. 29] describe the kind of person the Awful Grandmother is? What aspects, if any, of the Awful Grandmothers life story parallel Celayas life story? Are the Awful Grandmother and Celaya alike in character, and if so, in what ways? How does Celaya, who upon her grandmothers death “cant think of anything to say for my grandmother who is simply my fathers mother and nothing to me” [p. 350], ultimately come to feel that shes “turned into her. And [can] see inside her heart” [p. 424]? What does the Awful Grandmother teach Celaya about herself?
9. Celaya writes, “On Sunday mornings other families go to church. We go to Maxwell Street” [p. 294]. Does she relate this cynically or humorously, or both? What religious beliefs does Celaya hold? How is her faith or religion different from Zoilas, who is portrayed as having no faith at all [Chapter 62], or from the faith or religion of the Awful Grandmother [see, for example, p. 191]?
10. What is the role played in the novel by the various Mexican or Mexican-American figures of popular culture who have encounters with members of the Reyes family? How does Cisneros use these characters to convey both the individuality as well as the universality of the Mexican-American immigrant experience?
11. The characters in Caramelo make frequent observations about Mexicans. For example, Zoila asserts that “all people from Mexico City are liars” [p. 353], and Celaya comments “Were so Mexican. So much left unsaid” [p. 428]. With what tone do the characters deliver these types of generalizations, and how are they to be interpreted? Why might these characters portray their native countrymen in this way? Do people of other cultures make similarly deprecating comments, and what purpose might making such comments serve for such people?
12. How does the Reyes family view the United States as compared to Mexico? How are the two countries portrayed in Caramelo on both political and social levels? Celaya observes that “[e]veryone in Chicago lived with an idea of being superior to someone else, and they did not, if they could help it, live on the same block without of lot of readjustments, of exceptions made for the people they know by name instead of as ‘those so-and sos” [p. 289-290]. Is this different or similar to how people from different classes or ethnicities (such as the Indians) in Mexico City treat or view each other?
13. The Reyes family members move fluidly throughout the book between Mexico and the United States. Does the ease of such movement diminish for each generation? How does the immigration of Inocencio and his siblings and first cousins reflect immigration between the countries in the middle part of the twentieth century, and how has immigration to the United States from Mexico changed today? How do the changes in immigration reflect the changes in the relationship between the countries? How does Caramelo reflect the immigrant experience generally for the middle part of the twentieth century, and how have changes within the United States both socially and politically affected the contemporary immigrant experience?
14. For the Reyes family members who immigrate to the United States, which elements of Mexico are preserved in America and which are lost in the process of assimilation? Is it necessary for an immigrant to lose something of his or her original culture in order to assimilate into a new culture and, once assimilated, are the old ways lost for good? Does being “American” mean something different for the first generation of immigrants such as Inocencio than for the American-born Zoila or their daughter, the American-born Celaya? How does Celaya reconcile her Mexican legacy with her American future, and does this reconciliation give meaning to the term “Mexican-American”? How do shifting external border relations between Mexico and the United States reflect or affect the characters internal conflicts between their Mexican and American identities?
15. Aunty Light-Skin proclaims: “Because thats how los gringos are, they dont have any morals. They all have dinner with each others exes like it was nothing. ‘Thats because were civilized, a turista once explained to me. What a barbarity! Civilized? You call that civilized? Like dogs. Worse than dogs. If I caught my ex with his ‘other Id stab them both with a kitchen fork. I would!” [p. 273]. What system of morality do the Reyes abide by? Does this code of morality reflect a more Mexican, more American, or a Mexican-American way of thinking? What cultural differences between Mexicans and Americans does Aunty Light-Skins proclamation illustrate?
16. “There is nothing Mexican men revere more than their mamas; they are the most devoted of sons perhaps because their mamas are the most devoted of mamas...when it comes to their boys” [p. 128]. What explains the strength of the relationship between Inocencio and the Awful Grandmother? Is the relationship between Zoila and Toto equally strong? Why or why not? How can mothers and daughters, such as Aunty Light-Skin and the Awful Grandmother, or Celaya and Zoila, successfully relate to each other in the face of such strong mother-son relationships? Is the favoritism these mothers show for their sons unique to Mexican culture? How does the bond between a son and his mother compare to the relationship between Celaya and Inocencio?
17. How does the fact of Candelarias parentage affect each of the family members differently—Zoila, the grandmother, Celaya? Does the information that Candelarias father is Inocencio change relationships between or among any of the Reyes family members?
18. Celaya says, “Life was cruel. And hilarious all at once” [p. 30]. And when things seem to have reached a low point in her life, she proclaims, “Celaya. Im still myself. Still Celaya. Still alive. Sentenced to my life for however long God feels like laughing” [p. 357]. What attitude does Celaya have toward her own life? What keeps her going?
19. Inocencio tells Celaya: “Always remember, Lala, the family comes first—la familia” [p. 360]. Does her needy call home to Papa after her episode with Ernesto in Mexico City prove her father right [p. 390]? How does Celaya reconcile her fathers statement about family with her own vision of her future as an independent woman?
20. The first time the word “caramelo” appears in the book is when it is used to describe Candelarias skin tone [p. 34]. The second time is to name the color of the Awful Grandmothers uncompleted rebozo [p. 58]. How are the two events connected? Why might Cisneros have chosen Caramelo for the title? What does the caramelo rebozo mean to Celaya the storyteller? To Celaya the Reyes family member? [See pp. 426-430.]
21. Cisneros employs elaborate and vivid food metaphors, such as “Regina was like the papaya slices she sold with lemon and a dash of chile; you could not help but want to take a little taste” [p. 117] and “Have you ever been that sad? Like a donut dunked in coffee” [p. 274]. Is taste the strongest sense her metaphors invoke? How does she also invoke the senses of smell, sight, and sound? What does Cisneros achieve stylistically or thematically by invoking these senses?
22. In Chapter 66 (“Nobody but Us Chickens”) the Grandmother gets sick—then, before Celaya reports to the reader her grandmothers fate, she relates in Chapter 67 (“The Vogue”) how she and Viva got caught shoplifting. Why might Cisneros have juxtaposed these two chapters? Celaya also sets up family mysteries and delays solving them until much later in the novel. For example, the mystery of why Celaya is missing from the photograph on the beach is answered later. Are there other examples of such mysteries, and how does Cisneros use these mysteries to structure the plot and move it along?
23. Does Celaya betray her father by telling the story? Is Inocencio right that the family portrayed in Caramelo appears “shameless,” as he cautions Celaya [p. 430]? If not, how might one describe the family portrayed in Caramelo?
24. How does Caramelo push the stylistic boundaries of a traditional novel? Does the authors use of footnotes; different voices; repetition; Spanish language, songs, and poetry; as well as other stylistic devices alter the definitions of form and structure? How do such stylistic devices reinforce the themes of the novel?
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Joyful, fizzy.... This is one of those novels that blithely leap across the border between literary and popular fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review
Sandra Cisneros, the award-winning author of the highly acclaimed The House on Mango Street and several other esteemed works, has produced a stunning new novel, Caramelo. This long-anticipated novel is an all-embracing epic of family history, Mexican history, the immigrant experience, and a young Mexican-American womans road to adulthood. We hope the following introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography enhance your groups reading of this captivating and masterful literary work.