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    Familia Fictions: Writing the Family in Tomás Rivera's ...And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him and Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo


    Leen, Catherine (2012) Familia Fictions: Writing the Family in Tomás Rivera's ...And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him and Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo. In: Critical Insights: Family. Salem Press, pp. 665-82. ISBN 978-1-4298-3734-

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    Abstract

    According to Latino writer Ilan Stavans, “Geneology rules Latino liter - ature tyrannically” and “fiction is a device used to explore roots”(54). While it is almost impossible to dispute the idea that the topic of the family is central to Chicana and Chicano writing, Stavans signals that such dominance must be weighed against authorial uses of the family motif as part of literary creations. The novels that will be examined in this chapter are very different. Tomás Rivera’s . . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him was originally written in Spanish in 1971. Set in rural Utah, this brief novel is a coming-of-age tale, or bildungsroman, that chronicles the experiences that will help the unnamed narrator make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Caramelo , a 2003 book by Sandra Cisneros, is a lengthy, fragmented novel divided into three parts. Beginning with the Mexican Revolution and ending sometime in the 1970s, Caramelo is also a bildungsroman, but the narrator finds her way in the world by rewriting the stories that comprise her family’s history to create her own story.

    Item Type: Book Section
    Keywords: Familia Fictions; Writing; Family; Tomás Rivera; And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him; Sandra Cisneros; Caramelo;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures > Spanish
    Item ID: 10287
    Depositing User: Catherine Leen
    Date Deposited: 05 Dec 2018 15:47
    Publisher: Salem Press
    Refereed: Yes
    URI:
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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