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-
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.
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