Regular Rumination

I read Marcelo and I loved it.  I could end this review there and call it a day, but I figure you’re probably here for more than that.  You’re here for all the pertinent review questions.  Sure, it’s great that I loved it, but why? I’m having difficulty articulating that because I read Marcelo in the Real World so long ago and haven’t had the chance to sit down and review it.  So I’m going to tell you in the simplest words I can:

I loved Marcelo because I loved Marcelo.

I loved Marcelo because I loved every other character, too.  There is not a secondary character in here – they are all beautifully realistic.  Stork, through Marcelo’s voice, breathed life into these people; they felt real in the best way that characters can.

I loved Marcelo because it has some serious cross-over potential.  In fact, I think the publishers might have made a mistake.  Why is Marcelo YA?  Well, because it has a young, teenage protagonist with a voice that sounds younger in some respects, but also much older.  This novel is often compared to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, understandably: but why is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time an adult novel and Marcelo in the Real World a young adult novel?  But where, for me, The Curious Incident lacked feeling and left me cold and unconnected, Marcelo was filled to bursting with emotion and feeling and discovery.  What Marcelo in the Real World can offer an adult is completely different from what it can offer a young reader (as is true of most books, but bear with me).  Marcelo is almost 18, but he has an autism-like condition that makes him very brilliant, but socially and emotionally different.  Marcelo’s dad is convinced that he can make it in the real world, if he just tries.  So he hires him in the mail room at his office.  What Marcelo learns there is a very grown up lesson and it would do any adult some good to look at this conflict with eyes as fresh as Marcelo’s.

So none of that is to say that this book isn’t fit for young adults, because it definitely is.  It’s just to say give me an adult who “doesn’t like YA” and I will give them Marcelo.

I love Marcelo because of this:

Actually, I am asking myself if conversations with friends always feel like this — two minds bound together by their focus on the same subject (89).

And this:

I stay up listening to her fall asleep, feeling how it is not to be alone (261).

And this:

I take as long as I can wiping my hands.  Now it seems funny to me that I got so nervous at the thought of sleeping next to Jasmine.  What is happening?  Yesterday, Jonah asked me if was sexually attracted to Jasmine and that notion seemed shocking to me.  And now there is this.  I touch my abdomen where I feel a tingling.  That’s what “butterflies in the stomach” feel like.  These butterflies were let loose by what?  The first one or two came out when Jasmine talked about the Internal Music and how I could be flesh and blood like her, for instance, and then thousands fluttered when she pointed at the spot where we will sleep together.  They are not unpleasant, these butterflies.  Their tiny wings are pulling me out, tickling me with the anticipation of lying next to Jasmine (257).

So, if I haven’t convinced you yet that I loved this book, I’m not sure what else I could tell you.  Get out there and get reading.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR

Also reviewed by: 1330v, The Compulsive Reader, Book Addiction, Fledgling, The YA YA YAs , bookshelves of doom, TV and Book Addict, stuff as dreams are made on.

Well, as most of you know, we’re pretty much completely snowed in around here.  Though the roads are getting clearer, I’m probably not going to go anywhere today.  I’m getting just a little bit of the cabin fever, so we might go back outside later and go sledding or build an igloo or something.  Anything to get out of the house!  Yesterday I cleared off my car and did some shoveling, but mostly I read!  This weekend I read two excellent YA novels: After Tupac & D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson and Fire by Kristin Cashore.  Both were quick reads that really lived up to their hype.  Jacqueline Woodson has a special place in my heart after If you come softly. I also really loved Graceling, so I was looking forward to Fire to return to that world.  It was a little different than I expected, but in an awesome way.  Cashore writes brilliant female characters and Fire is no different.

Today I’ll be reading The Natural History of Unicorns, some poetry by Frederick Siedel and Anne of Avonlea.  What are you reading?

What do you remember learning about the Mexican American War when you were in high school?  If you remember anything, I’m sure it’s not the real history – at least, it wasn’t for me.  You’re going to be hearing a lot about the Mexican American War at Regular Rumination in the next few months, because I am currently enrolled in a class called Border Studies, which is a literature class of novels based on the border between the US and Mexico and between Spain and Africa.  So far I’ve really been enjoying the class, but it has certainly been a wake-up call.

The novel Cibolero is about Antonio Baca, a cibolero (buffalo hunter) who has settled down to raise a family in the plains of what will one day be New Mexico.  Baca and his family watch as Nuevo México because New Mexico and he is no longer treated as a citizen of the place he calls home.  One day,  his oldest daughter Elena is kidnapped by invading Texas Rangers and Baca goes after her, venturing into the country he once called home to find his beloved daughter.

Cibolero is a book that was sent to me for review about a conflict that occurs on the México/US border, and though I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I’m excited to be able to offer you a chance to win a copy

Books like Cibolero are important because  it takes an important historical topic and presents it in a literary form.  It’s a story, yes, but it’s also an opportunity.  I’m really looking  forward to reading Cibolero and I’m disappointed I didn’t get to it in time for today!  But like I said, you can win a copy right here!  All you have to do is ask Kermit Lopez a question about Cibolero in the comments!  I’ll pick a winner using random.org on Sunday, February 7!  Good luck!

Other stops on the tour: Sandra’s Book Club, Latino Book Examiner, Mama XXI, FireKing Press, Heidenkind’s Hideaway, Efrain’s Corner, BronzeWord Latino Authors, Musings.

Gloria Anzaldúa is the author of Borderlands/La Frontera, which was required reading for my Border Studies class, and it is a very interesting read that I highly recommend.  Anzaldúa is a lesbian chicana, born and raised in the United States and of Mexican descent.  Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is part memoir, part history book and part book of poetry.  I chose this poem because of the way it speaks frankly of a specific female experience.  This poem deals with many tragedies: from an accident that lead to disfigurement to sexual experiences to the births of children to the deaths of family members.  This poem is long, but rightfully so, as it chronicles an entire life through the eyes of a granddaughter.

Immaculate, Inviolate: Como Ella

She never lived with us
we had no bed for her
but she always came to visit.
A gift for m’ijita
two folded dollar bills secretly put in my hand.

I’d sit at her side
away from the bucket of brasas
enveloped en el olor de vieja
watch her roll her Buglar
yellowed talons plucking tobacco
knotted fingers rolling it thin, thinner,
tongue gumming edge of paper
sealing it pinching the ends
stroking it before striking match on thumbnail
watch smoke escape between chapped lips
curl through her white hair and pink skull.
They said at sixteen it had turned white overnight.

My grandmother could not tolerate heat.
She kept well away from fires.
A long time ago she burned herself.
She’d bent over the belly
of her woodburning stove
had seen no glimmer of a spark
had heaved up a can of kerosene

propping the edge on her hip
and cradling it to her chest
she’d let a few drops fall
on the charred sticks.
An invisible spark ignited
shot up the spout into her windpipe,
boom.
It took my uncle a long time
to carry the buckets of water from the well
soak the blankets
wrap them around her.

Mamá, usted ya no puede quedarse aquí sóla.
They made her give up the ranchouse
photographs, books, letters, yellowing.
Armarios, pantry closets looted
not growing under the covers.

She’d stay two weeks with one, two with another,
back and forth in her black dress
and with her thick velices
white sweat streaks across her round back,
under arms.
She never stopped wearing luto
first for my papagrande
who died before I was born
then for her brother
and, until she died elevel years ago,
she wore black for my father.
I didn’t go to her funeral
that too must have made her suffer.

Platícame del rancho Jesús María,
de los Vergeles, Mamagrande,
where I was reared.
Tell me about the years of drought
the cattle with hoof’n mouth
the rabid coyotes.
And as she talked I saw her breathing in the fire,
coughing up sooty spittle
skin blistering, becoming pus
nerve endings exposed,
sweating, skin pallid, clammy
the nausea, the dizziness,
swelling to twice her size.

I watched the charred scars
on her throat and breasts
turn into parchment splotches
they catch the sheen of the coals
glow pink and lavender over the blue skin.
She’d felt numb, she told me,
her voice hoarse from the fire
or the constant cigarette in her mouth,
as though frostbitten.

Once I looked into her blue eyes,
asked, Have you ever had an orgasm?
She kept quiet for a long time.
Finally she looked into my brown eyes,
told me how Papagrande would flip the skirt
of her nightgown over her head
and in the dark takeout his palo, his stick,
and do lo que hacen los hombres
while she laid back and prayed
he would finish quickly.

She didn’t like to talk about such things.
Mujeres no hablan de cosas cochinas.
Her daughters, my tías, never liked to talk about it –
their father’s other women, their half-brothers.

Sometimes when I get too close to the fire
and my face and chest catch the heat,
I can almost see Mamagrande’s face
watching him leave
taking her two eldest
to play with otherchildren
watching her sons y los de la otra
grow up together.

I can almost see that look
settle on her face
then hide behind parchment skin
and clouds of smoke.
Pobre doña Locha, so much dignity,
everyone said she had
and pride.

____________________________________________________________

In class, we have often discussed what makes a poem a poem.  How many literary devices must your piece have to be considered a poem?  Do it just have to have lines that are broken in the middle?  While I definitely don’t think that is the case, this poem does read more like prose much of the time.  What I think makes this a poem are, of course, not the linebreaks, but instead the way in which this woman’s life and story are told through figure.  It is not “and then, and then, and then”, but rather a series of images that paint a complete portrait of Mamagrande.   Ipersonally love that this poem is bilingual, because it is an integral part of the speaker’s and the figure’s life.  Do you think this alienates readers? As someone who doesn’t speak Spanish, what did you think of the Spanish parts of the poem?