Rebozos reconsidered: a dead end for Chicano literature?

Re1·i sta de Estudios Norteamericanos, n.º 1 I (2006), pp. 109 - 116 REBOZOS RECONSIDERED: A DEAD END FOR CHICANO LITERATURE? RA MÓN GARCÍA * MARÍA MARTÍNE Z- GUTIÉRREZ ** * Cali fo rnia State University Northrid ge ** CSU Fresno an d USAC, Univcrsity of Nevada There is a long literary distance between the rebozo (folkloric Mcxican shawl) that is worn by Dorolea, the psychotic, vag uel y victimized character in Juan Rulfo's masterpicce Pedro Páramo (1956) and the rebozo at the centcr of Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo. Dorotea carries an imaginary child in her rebozo, the inscrutable offspring of her demencia. Shc helps Pedro Páramo's son, Miguel, rape ali thc gi rls in Comala (this is the non-colorful form of Latín American magical realism that does not make it acrnss the bordcr). Dorotea is a haunting, di sturbing character, and she appears in only a few scenes in a very short novel. The rebozo in Caramelo, in contras!, is a symbol of the story itself, representing Lh e act of remembrance and Lhe passing on of family history. There is no grotesque hallucination in the folds of the rebozo, no psychological turmo il , and onc cannot help thinking that perhaps if there had been something else than artificial nostalgia somcwherc in all the old-fashioncd prettiness of its prose, the story «woven» from Cisneros's archetypal rebozo would have becn able to hold rigorous literary standards. Cisneros is the celebrated au th or of severa! books of poet ry, a novella, The Hou se 011 Mango Street, and a collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. In her poetry and in The H ouse 011 Man!{o Srreer Cisneros displayed a playful comma nd of narrative, empowering ideas and poetic language. The House 011 Mango Street is an accomp li shed, although uneven, adolescent story. Mango Street alone has sold more than two million copies, and Cisneros should be credited with cmpowering a generation of Latina girls who grew up in the 1990's, and who read thc book in high school. In Woman Hollering Creek, Cisneros tackled «difficult» subjects such as adultery, intemalized racism and AIDS. In the short story «Nev er 110 Ramón García a1Ui María Martíne~-Gutiérrez Marry a Mexican» Cbneros throws sexual politics upside down, and the assault on the moral and political foundations of heterosexual romance is daring. Caramelo was launched in early September 2002. with the requisite marketing blitz. Cisneros began appearing on the covcr of Latino-based magazines in costumes meant to complemcnt Caramelo 's cclebration of the Mexican and the beautifuL Countless newspaper articles and magazine stories began devoting as much time - if not more- to non-Jiterary matters: her special rebozos, her looks and her unconventional life, her purplc-painted housc etc., -the publicity photos add in g fue! to thc non-literary tire: Sandra in another colorful rebozo, this time with a tatoo or an umbrella as accessories; Sandra with another rebozo, this time wearing cowboy boots emblazoned with the Virgen de Guadalupe; Sandra decked out in Frida Kahlo wear in an Eisensteinian landscape of desert cacti. In a Warholian age in which art and eommerce can so easily switch places, it is necessary to ask. «What is the product that Ms. Cisneros is selling'!» In an article in Book Magazine, writer Dagoberto Gilb is quotcd as saying: «Talking about Sandra Cisneros thesc days is likc talking about Frida Kahlo.» That's a bit exaggerated, hut there is sorne truth to that. Gilb, however, is not speaking of Frida Kahlo the woman and thc extraordinary artist. but Frida the icon madc safc for commercial consumption. emptied of the radical force of her art. Donna Tartt's 111e Little Friend and Zadie Smith's Tlze Autograph Man, both published around the same time as Caramelo, wcre hcld up to much more rigorous literary standards. Donna Tartt was taken to task for lreading familim literary territory and for rcvisiting her roots (her Southern Gothic roots), the same qualities that for the most pmt charmed revicwers of Caramelo. «Threads of a Colorful Family» ran the titlc of Ron Charles' glowing review of Caramelo in the Christian Science Monitor and Caro! Memmott's cqually glowing apprabal in U5A Toda_v was titled «Caramelo weaves a colorful tale.» Zadie Smith was chastiscd for not meeting her high litcrary ambitions, and bccause her novel was not as good as her first (shame on her!). But these doublc standards reck of patronizing political correctness. After ali, Donna Tartt is the AntiKitsch, shc wcars stark designcr clothes (no nostalgic Southern Belle fashions for her) and she doesn 't smile for the camera. She is a serious writc r. And Zadie Smith, even though she's racially-mixed, is British, and you know th cy are jusi more sophisticated over there. Underneath ali the praise lavished on Caramelo there is an obvious paternalis ti c diplornacy, the idea that Latino writers should not be judgcd by the same standards as everybody e!se because Latina/o writers need to be tokenized. After ali, it is much more politically expedient to praise a book like Caramelo because it confirms the worst stereotypes: that Latinos are simple, kitschy, colorful and picturesque, fun damentally unthreatening. The main character in Caramelo, from whose point of vicw the story is told is named Lala, and h er main purpose is to be unconvincingly «nonnal» and likable. She is, in fact, too unremarkable to fo ll ow through 433 pages. She does not make exciting company through countless hours in the house of fiction. Katherine Anne Porter, a writer who shared Cisneros's interest in romantic Mexican subjects, didn't Rebo~os Reconsidered: A Dead End for Ch icano Literature? 111 write about rebozos but she wrote about women who wor e them. But even Porter's rebozo-ciad beauties were more than picturesque - they were strong creatures and far from innocent. One is bewildered by Lala, a character whose ma turity is questiona bl e even as an adult, and, whose actions are so ruled by cultural instinct that by comparison Katherinc Anne Porter's, and even D.H. Lawrence's Mexican modern primitives seem lame- «I gel dressed, tie the Grandmother 's caramelo rebozo on my head like a gypsy, and start sucking the fringe. lt has thc familiar swect taste to i t, like carrots, like camote, that calms me» (388). Rebozo chewing for relaxation is an intcr-generational trait, one of the many wonders passed on through the wondrous rebozo. It seems clcar sucking the rebozo brings the familiar taste that calms Lala, but it seems cven clearer that Cisneros is not familiar with the anthropological and social mcaning of the rclation bctween rebozo and mouth for Indian Mexican women: thcy have to cover their mouths with their rebozo (and to chew if they wish) to preven! them from speaking in public. The idealization of the rebozo in arder to characterize Lala as true Mexican woman is far from accurate; actually it is based on a false ass um ption of Mexican reality. On the olher side, by the time Lala st ar ts cbewing on her rebozo for its calming effect you don't know who is more frightening, Rulfo 's demented Dorotea or this strange woman with animalistic qualities. In Lala, D.H. Lawrence's blood primitive has morphed with a Har lequ in heroine. This is Lala after she has draped the mythical caramelo rebozo on her lover Ernesto, and they are consummating their confounding attraction: «Ali thc parts of me coming back from some pl ace befare 1 was born, and me littlc and safe in the warmth of that name, well loved, myself again. The syllables making me arch and stretch like a cat, rol! over with my belly showing, preen. And laugh out loud» (382). There are other instanccs of feline fernale behaviour, Lala 's mothcr Soledad is described as such: «Likc a dusty housc cal, she stretched oftcn and rubbed her lower back, and whcn shc was lost in thought, she stroked her belly unaware she was stroking her belly. The body spoke and said just enough, but not too much» ( 165). Caramelo is peopled with colorful characters with co lorful names: Lala, Aunty Light-Skin, the Awful grandmother, the Little Grandfather, Unclc Baby, Tikis, Uncle Fat Face, Señor Coochie-the list gocs on. By the 35th «chapter» you long for someone with a non-cutcsey name. In Cisneros's House on Mango Street we encountered the mother of the adolescent Esperanza, whose hair «smells like bread» a nd in Caramelo our critica) facultics are once again asked to be suspended as we are introduced to Catita 's nameless «fat daughter» «who smells of chocolate». Catita herself smells «the same as the steamy dishcloth that holds the hot corn tortillas ». In a novel bursting with the most stcreotypical cultural rcfcrences, even the improbable characters ha ve to smell of thcir culture: bread, chocolate, dishcloths for hot corn tortillas. I'll buy th at one whcn I read a French novel in which characters sm ell like paté and camemhert cheese. Ali the focus on descriptions of traditional Mexican culture ring false, and it gets tiring -it is not enough that the characters are Mexicans, everything they do and everything around them has to hit you over the head with it. Cisneros creates a hyper-Mexicanized world in which excessive descriptions conspire to make t he 112 Ramón GufC'Ía and María Maníne: - Guti érrez cartoonish characters kitschy. In Mexico «S tars open white and soft like fresh bolill o (18) bread,» (17) churches are «the col or of flan,» (146) eyes are «tender and dark as café de olla» and babies have «limbs like choriw» ( 196). In The House on Mango St r ee t grandpa 's feet are «fat and doughy likc thick tamales» and in Caramelo it is the grandmoth er's feet that are «fat little tamales» (252). Caram elo falls short of Cisneros's ea rli er work to the extent that it is not a novel in a novelistic sense; it is a series of vignettes s trung together to make up for the fact that there is no plot or conflict, which would not be a problem if there were ideas or philosophy in their place. But there aren't. Lala's ruminations hardly qualify as philosophy: «lt was only later when she was near the end of her life that she began to doubt what she'd actually seen and what sh e'd embroidered over time , because aftcr a while the embroidcry se em s real and the real seems embroidery» ( I 35). Lala is aftlicted with a mild case of Proustian remembrance; unfortunately, it is of th e tritest strain. What Caramelo <loes have plenty of is en tire chapters comprised of pointless quaint situations. The chapter titles th emse!ves need serious cri tica! consideration: «He Who is Destined to be a Tamale,» « Nobody but Us Chickens,» «We Are Not Dogs» «Spic Spanish.» It' s hard to figure out what the point of thi s inexhaustible bombardment of cultural clichés is, because th e only ideas that manage to escape from it are that Mexicans are not only simple but funny. and that, yes, they are part of North American society. But if you already know th e latter. and find the fo1mcr suspect, Caramelo doesn 't make interesting company. You can spend your time reading one of those thick Russian novels that anyone is hesitan! to pick up, fo r fear of fceing guilty if one does not linish it. Probably you already know that Anna Karenina kills herself, but you would like to find out how and wh y. Whercas in Caramelo il is already known no one was going lo kill themselves or anyone elsc -killing and suicide is hard to make quaint, and when such things are dealt with in literary fiction we know we are in for a challenging philosophical and moral ride. The border-crossing ride that wc a.re invitcd to take in Caramelo is onc in which no difficult questions are posed, and nothing is challenged. Whcn critical inlerrogation is lacking, the work is more accurately dcfined as popular/commercial fi ction, not literary fiction. Which begs th e question: why was Cisneros's Caramelo revicwcd as if it were literary fiction? Why was it placed on the Los A 11 geles Times best books of the year next to Paul Auster and Umbcrto Eco? Yxta Maya Murray's The Co11q11est also made The Los Angeles Times best books of 2002. Murray has accumulated vast amounts of praise for gr itty depictio ns of bar ri o Jifc in such works as the 1996 Locas. a novel about the pathetic lives of gangster girls (cholas) in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park. Tlús epic tale of ignorance and ga ng warfare is narrate<l by a coterie of chola voices who a li sound alike, a hydra-headed report from the gutter. This is Lucia, one of thc hyperbolic cholas, in onc of the countlcss moments of tough ghetto musings: «I was a slick little jalapeiia, pop me in your mouth, ca use sex is in a Mexican woman 's blood, it comes natural, and I gave it to him crazy, wild with lots of noise, for as Rebozas Reconsidered: A Dead End for Chicano Literature? 113 long as he could takc it so that he'd stay put by my side.» We are familiar with the cholas in Locas not only because they are stereotypes, but because we saw these same stereotypcs on the screen a few years before in Allison Anders's 1994 loser melodrama Mi Vida Loca. Murray assumcs a similar coarse barrio nairative voice in Rita Zapata, the hood-rat character that tells thc story of What It Takes to Get to Vegas. Rita Zapata speaks in a strange ghetto lingo that's not part of any barrio Iexicon, refeJTing to herself and other women as «putana(s)» (is the correct word puta?), and saying things like «l pushed my arms out against bis, screamed filthies.» Rita's love interest, and her gold-digging ticket to Vegas, is boxer Guillermo Billy Navarro, a figure into which ali popular stereotypes about the Latino male are packed. He is macho and unfaithful, brutish, and naturally lacks intelligence. Rita Zapata is his female counterpart~she is frivolous and hungry for sex, stifled and needy, but she fights, and even kills women for the love of her macho man. This is the offensively familiar masquerading as reality, art (or the lack thercof) imitating telenovelas and racist North American stereotypes. Like Locas, What it Takes to Get to Vegas is ostensibly a raw portrayal of tough ghetto life, but if so why do we need barrio catfights depicted in this way?: «I went over to th e bed and got her by the hair. l puJJed her off with one tug and she screamed like a trapped cat and I kept tugging. Her fat butt blubbed around and her breasts swung like bags and her fcet with their Aztec red toenails gripped the floor. I wanted to smash her head into the wall, and T would have done it except for Billy getting behind me wi th his wet p en is nudging me and his arms Iocking around my shouldcrs.» Wlzat il Takes to Get to Vegas continues a legacy of the Mexican as boxer, a figure of social conscience in Hollywood's «social problem» tilms of the l 950's, and whose watcred-down imagc survives in the television show Resurrection Bo ulevard. And of course therc is the sexy thought of Osear de la Hoya which haunts any contemporary imagining of Mexican boxcrs, and that will help sell it cvcn if nothing intcresting is actua ll y imagined. We see the devolution of characterization if we turn to Jack London's short story «T he Mexican,» in which boxer Felipe Rivera dreams of rcvolution and is infused with London 's own melancholy socialist longings. In Locas and What it Takes to Get to Vegas, Maya Murray performs a ghetto ventriloquism th at sounds off ali thc most damaging and unpleasant stereotypcs about Mexican mcn a nd wome n. As a hopeful antidote, one can turn to Luis Rodrígucz's The Republic of East L.A., which proves that stories about the inn er city can be populated by dignified and complex characters whose reality need not voyeuristicalJy give credence to Cops or Bad Boys. 1 Jt's b ee n dccades since Mcxican writers and filmmakers abandoned the gloritication of rebozos (1 don't think they were evcr much into tamales). Rebozos Sorne fin e contemporary writers, such as Gary Soto, Susan Straíght, Dagoher to Gilb, Luis Rodríguez, Sesshu Foster an<l Mariscla Norte, have also written ahout Chicanas/os within a working class contcl\t, in a not voycuristical or simplistic way. 114 Rmm í11 García and María Martíne ~- Gutiérre z are plentiful in the comedia ranchera cinematic gcnre of the 1930's-40's, a rural musical filled wi th happy singing Mcxicans in fol kl oric landscapes. Two of the most mythical rebozos were wom by two of th e mo st high-chce kboned actresses of th e Golden agc of Mexican c inema , Dolores Del Río in Emilio « El Indio» Fernández's María Ca ndelaria ( 1944) and St ella Inda in Roberto Gava ldón 's El Rebozo de Sol edad ( 1952). Th ese cinematic rebozos werc not simp le indi gcnous fashion statements, they were melancholy symbols of cverything that was Mexican and beau ti ful. Although th cy quickly became cursi and tourist y, the art is tr y of the melod rama parading them transformed them into myth. But even those mythical rebozos were not a safc ha vcn for che affirmation of traditional cul ture; the tra ge dics of modern social li fe ruthlcssly invade the beautiful Mexican landscapc, complicating the gl amour of the rebozo -María Candelaria gets st on ed by h er own people, accused of bcing a whore, a nd Soledad dics giving birth. By th e 1980's, when Mexican mtists Je su sa Rodríguez a nd Ast ri d Hadad wcre rcviving Mexican indigenous cu lture, folkloric molifs had bccomc taboo in Mexican in te ll ectual circles because of their assoc iation wi th reactiun ary politics and the tourist industry. But Rodrígu ez and Hada d didn 't rccover rebozos and Aztec go<lde sses in order to roman ti cizc thern. they re-interpretcd them through irony and a satiric dark humor that was subversively relcvant and cuntemporary. In Caramelo. Cisneros evokes the romantic folklore of rebozos and tamales, so that Chicano culture can be portrayed as a cross bctween María Candelaria and a TV sitcom in t he fonn of the Am e ri can family saga. What needs critica] reflectiun is Cisneros's rendering of thc immigrant cxperience as slapstick, thc transformation of Mcxican-American working class history intu a comedia ra11chera. One is lcd to won <lcr if the older generations of Mexican immigrants who work and continue tu contribute to American suciety are honored by exotic touristy purtrayals'! Most likely th ey are puzzled by Chicano writcrs who insist on being nostalgic for a folklore and a traditional culture thal is more rnade up than real. more a product of th c writer's self-indulgence th an the lived experience of a hist or ical Mexican community in the United Statcs. In the 1940"s the great Cub an writer Alejo Car pcn ti er argued against the false enchantments of surrealism by <lelining what he terme <l /o real nuiral'illo.w, a vision of rcality that would truly represent La tin American histury and society. Carpentier stat ed that thc «prescnce» and «authorit y» of lo re al maravilloso was «the patrimony of ali the Arncricas.» But whi lc the decades that folluwed Carpenlier's pr ophelic literary assessment inspire c.l Latin American writers to crcatc sorne of the most masterful and imaginative literat ur e of th c 20th century, in the United States it produc ed Aztec princess jugglers (Yxta May a Murray's Tlze Co11q uest}, d ead children flying onto rooft ops (Ana Cas tillo 's So Far Frmn God), waving dolls (Sandra Cis ne ros 's Cam111elo), and a glut of co ntrived oddities lh at were neither marvelous nur real. What Chicano «magical rca li sm» lacked and which much of the literature ha s fa il ed to incorporatc is a c ri tica] p crsp cc ti ve, an explora ti on of th e dark or n eg ative mattcr t ha t is the true country of literary fi ctiun. One ca n reca ll the terrifying beauty uf José Donoso's mac a br e magica l rea lisrn in The Oh.w:ene Bird of Night in order tu R ebows Re co11side red: A Dead End for Chica110 Literature 1 115 measure lhe unaccountable extent to which Carpentier's ideas of lo real maravilloso were trivialized and misinherited in the United States. If we wcre to do a census of the people that populate contemporary Chicano literature a vast majority would be ch ildren trying to figure out thcir idcntity in coming of age stories. We often have you ng students, La tino or ot hcrwise, in our Mcxican literature course comment that what th ey are reading is not what they expected. When we ask what it was that they were expecting, thc answers diff cr but they come from the same place. Thcy say t he y werc expecting more things about «Aztecs» and «poor peoplc.» Many students expect to encounter Mexican «traditions» and by that they apparently mean tamales, folklore, piñatas and things Catholic. Ami for sorne strange reason that still puzzles us. many students cxpect Mexican literature to be «l ess complicatetl.» Sorne students tell us that so much of what we were reading ami thc Mexican films we were watching were « Wei rd .» Thcy thought we would be reading about < <n i cer thin gs ... normal stuff». not what is to be found in Lourdes Arredondo 's fiction and the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Arturo Ripstein. For nice and normal Mexican things these students would not have to go v er y far. th ey could consult Camm el o and find ali those Mex ican traditions that an American ima ginary tourist comes to expect of anything «Mexican.» Wc focus on Cisneros's Caramelo because it is symptomatic of th e stagnation of a cerlain type of Chicano litcrature, and because we think it represents a dead end for a Iiterature that lacks a self-critical perspcctive. There ar e hardly any anti-heroes in th e literature written by Chicanos because charactcrs are oftcn burdencd wi th being representativcs of positivc or familiar aspee! of their culture and histor y. Tha t a signilicant portion of modero wo rl d literaturc is po pulated with anti-hcroes (characters who em body not th e affirmati ve em bl ems of their culture but the uncanny ills of their soeiety). and that Ch icano literature is practically devoid of th em is something worth pondcring. Wh at is regrcttahle is the fact that so much of o ur reality (prcscnt or past) remains untouched by li terature. In its place we are offcred the miificial comforts of nostalgia (for the pastor for the present). s im ple romantizations of hackneyed c ul tural symbols and thc sugarcoating of historical experience. Ambiguit y, serious moral rcflcction and the comp lexities of psycholo gy and social lif e have been replaccd in C<1ra melo by the i nnovative idea that Mexicans are amusing and naturally o ve r the top. If this sounds like lhe visionary metaphysics of a TV sitcom, that's bccause it is. There are no heavy duty conflicts in Caramelo because in Cisncros's postcard universe Chicanos do no wrong, th ey suffer no great tragedi esthey live in a perpetua! lig ht comcdy. What Caramelo reveals most forcefully is a serious poverty of imagination and un alarming lack of moral vision. Since Pttblisher's Weekly declared Caramelo a «landmark» and since we know that landmarks can s om etimes become bluepri nt s, Caramelo could prefigure the next genera ti on of Chi cano wri ti ng. But if that is the case. then much of o ur contemporary reality. in ali it s true bcauty a n<l myster y, will remain outside th e purview of the written word. The blurbs on the back cover of Ca ramelo include an odd one from Mexican writer. Elena Poniatowska, in which 116 Ramón García and María Martbte z- Gutiérrez shc states that Cisneros is «like a bce that extracts new honey from old llowers ... » and that Caramelo is «likc Mexican candy» But by the tenth vigne tte one wishes the honeybee would sting someon e, and one hop es beyond hope Lhat sorne of that ca ndy would be Jaced with literary arsenic so it would stop being so saccharine. WORKS CITED Carpentier, Alejo. «De lo real maravilloso americano.» Tientos y diferencias, en Obras Completas. Ensayos. México: Siglo XXI, 1990. 13 -18. Cisneros, Sandra. Caramelo. New York: Vintagc Contemporaries, 2002. Edición en español: Barcelon a: Seix Barral, 2003. - . The House of Mango Street. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1984. -. Woman Holl er ing Creek and Other Stories. New York: Random House. 1991. Gilg. Oagoberto quoted in Book Magazine, issue September/October 2002. www. Barnes&Noble.com. Lawrcnce, D.H. Tlze P/um ed Seipent. New York: Vintage International, 1980. Murria, Yxta Maya. Locas. New York: Harp er Collin s, 1996. - . What lt Takes to Get to Vegas. New York: Harpcr Collins, 1999. -. The Conques/. Ncw York: H ar per Collins, 2002. Porter, Kathcrine Ann. Flowering Judas. New York: Harcourt Bruce, 19 30. Rodríguez, Lui s. The Repuhlic of East L.A. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. Rulfo, Juan. Pedro Páramo. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1955. Smit h, Zadie. The Autograph Man. New York: Vintage, 2003. Tartt, Donna. Tite Li1tle Friend. New Yo r k: Yin tage, 2003.