During her family's annual car trip from Chicago to Mexico City, Lala Reyes listens to stories about her family, including her grandmother, the descendant of a renowned dynasty of shawl makers, whose magnificent striped (or caramelo) shawl has come into Lala's possession, in a multi-generational saga of a Mexican-American family. 150,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)
During her family's annual car trip from Chicago to Mexico City, Lala Reyes listens to stories about her family, including her grandmother, the descendant of a renowned dynasty of shawl makers, whose magnificent striped shawl has come into Lala's possession. - (Baker & Taylor)
Lala Reyes' grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl, makers. The striped caramelo rebozo is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala's possession. The novel opens with the Reyes' annual car trip - a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels - from Chicago to "the other side": Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family's stories, separating the truth from the "healthy lies" that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the "Paris of the New World" to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties - and, finally, to Lala's own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas. - (Blackwell North Amer)
1. From the novel's opening epigraph–'Tell me a story, even it it's 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 can't remember where the truth ends and the talk begins.' (p. 17) And while she is assuring us, 'I wish I could tell you about this episode in my family's history, but nobody talks about it, and I refuse to invent what I don't know' (p. 136), she also acknowledges, 'The same story becomes a different story depending on who is telling it' (p. 159). For example, clearly the Awful Grandmother is sugarcoating the truth about her marriage to Narciso (p. 174). What other aspects of the novel are evidently 'untruthful'? Is the reader to believe that Caramelo is just a 'different kind of lie' (p. 250)? 2. Celaya says, 'I'm not ashamed of my past. It's the story of my life I'm sorry about.' (p. 410). What's the difference? 3. The narrative transitions from one storyteller's point of view, or voice, to another's in different parts of the story. For example, in Chapter 22, Celaya as the story-teller engages in a dialogue with the Awful Grandmother about the way the grandmother's story is being told (pp. 99—126). Then, in Chapter 29, Narciso begins to tell his own story of when he lived in Chicago (p. 139). And later, in Chapters 34—45, the dialogue between Celaya and the Awful Grandmother returns. Celaya seems to find her own voice and point of view in Chapter 58. 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 reader's ability to sympathize or empathize with the characters? 4. Often elements of one person's life are echoed later in the story, in either the same character's life or in another character’s. For example, Cisneros uses the same sentence ('And it was good and joyous and blessed') to describe Grandmother's first sexual encounter with Narciso (p. 157) and later her death (p. 355). And the argument between Mother and Celaya (p. 371) echoes the earlier argument between Aunty Light-Skin and the Awful Grandmother (p. 268). 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 Se–ora Reyes' (p. 119). Does this nonlinear plot structure support the assertion that family and history are without beginning, middle, or end, but are, rather, a 'pattern' (p. 411)? 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 Haley's Roots, with which the reader might be familiar? 7. 'We are all born with our destiny. But sometimes we have to help our destiny a little' (p. 109) is a theme emphasized throughout the novel. For example, Viva tells Celaya: 'I believe in destiny as much as you do, but sometimes you've gotta help your destiny along' (p. 353). 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. 411). What is the difference? 8. How does the oft-repeated phrase '[j]ust enough, but not too much' (e.g., p. 98) describe the kind of person the Awful Grandmother is? What aspects, if any, of the Awful Grandmother's life story parallel Celaya's life story? Are the Awful Grandmother and Celaya alike in character, and if so, in what ways? How does Celaya, who upon her grandmother's death 'can't think of anything to say for my grandmother who is simply my father's mother and nothing to me' (p. 357), ultimately come to feel that she's 'turned into her. And [can] see inside her heart' (p. 439)? 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. 301). Does she relate this cynically or humorously, or both? What religious beliefs does Celaya hold? How is her faith or religion different from Zoila's, who is portrayed as having no faith at all (Chapter 61), or from the faith or religion of the Awful Grandmother (see, for example, p. 196)? 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, the Little Grandfather claims that being Mexican means loving as intensely as hating (p. 56; and p. 282), Zoila asserts that 'all people from Mexico City are liars' (p. 360), and Celaya comments that Mexicans 'leave much unsaid' (p. 442). 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 so's' ' (p. 297). 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 - (Random House, Inc.)
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 Mexican-American immigrant experience, and a young Mexican-American woman's road to adulthood. We hope the following questions, discussion topics, and author biography enhance your group's reading of this captivating and masterful literary work. Born the seventh child and only daughter to Zoila and Inocencio Reyes, Celaya Reyes spent her childhood traveling back and forth between her family's home in Chicago to her father's birth home in Mexico City, Mexico. Celaya's intimidating paternal grandmother, adored and revered by Celaya's father, dominates these visits, and Celaya dubs her the Awful Grandmother. Celaya's story begins one summer in Mexico when she was just a little girl, but soon her girlhood experiences segue back in time–to before Celaya was born–to her grandparents' history. Celaya traces the Awful Grandmother's lonely and unhappy childhood in a Mexico ravaged by the Mexican revolution of 1911, her meeting and ultimate union with Celaya's grandfather, Narciso Reyes (the Little Grandfather), and the birth of their first and favorite son, Celaya's father, Inocencio. Inocencio Reyes moves to the United States as a young man, and soon meets Zoila, a Mexican-American woman, with her own colorful mixed-Mexican parentage. Celaya develops the portrait of her parents' love-based, but volatile, marriage and the growth of their own Mexican-American family. After the Little Grandfather's death, the family moves the Awful Grandmother up to the United States with them, first to Chicago, then to San Antonio. Soon afterward, the Awful Grandmother dies, leaving her teenage granddaughter to struggle with her unresolved relationship with her late grandmother. Through her grandmother's history, Celaya discovers her own Mexican-American heritage, enabling her ultimately to carve out an identity of her own in the two countries she inhabits and that inhabit her–Mexico and America. As the family's self-appointed historian, or storyteller, Celaya's tale weaves Mexican social, political, and military history around intimate family secrets and the stormy and often mysterious relationships among multiple generations of family members. The marvelous, often riotous cast of characters that march through time and across the North American continent ranges from close family members to Mexican-American icons of popular culture that have random encounters with the Reyes family. (Remember Senor Wences with his painted talking hand (p. 224)? The spirited, likeable characters, while at times mythological in their characteristics, are always intensely human in their flaws and emotions. While each character can claim equal footing in the Reyes web of family and history, each holds a role of differing significance in Celaya's personal odyssey of connecting to her roots and carving her future. - (Random House, Inc.)
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.
From the Trade Paperback edition. - (Random House, Inc.)
Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ The author's long-awaited second novel (following The House on Mango Street, 1984) is a sweeping, fictionalized history of her Mexican American family. When Celaya (or "Lala") Reyes takes a family vacation from Chicago to Mexico City, she begins a journey from girl to young adult and from the present to the past. Generous digressions trace roots and branches on the luxuriant family tree, telling the tales of ancestors, family members, and sometimes even walk-on players. The book's title refers to an unfinished, candy-colored rebozo (shawl) that comes to symbolize both the interconnectedness of all these individual histories and the author's act of weaving them together. Still, the focus is on Lala, her papa, and the Awful Grandmother, the last a truly wonderful literary creation-- a despotic matriarch guaranteed to frighten young and old but whose wounds, once revealed, are a revelation. By book's end, the different threads of these three lives are snugged into a tight knot. Cisneros combines a real respect for history with a playful sense of how lies often tell the greatest truths--the characters, narrator, and author all play fast and loose with the facts. But, Lala learns, the ability to write your own history also means you must take special care in choosing your fate. The author's gorgeous prose, on-a-dime turns of phrase, and sumptuous scene-setting make this an unforgettable read. ((Reviewed August 2002)) Copyright 2002 Booklist Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
A sprawling family saga with a zesty Mexican-American accent from Cisneros, author of, most recently, Woman Hollering Creek (1991).Every summer, all three Reyes brothers drive with their wives and children from Chicago to Mexico City to visit their parents. Narrator Lala begins with a particularly dreadful trip during which "the Awful Grandmother" reveals a shameful secret from her favorite son's past to humiliate her detested daughter-in-law. These are Lala's parents, and Lala then rolls the narrative back, goaded by a scolding second voice whose identity we learn later, to tell us how a desolate, abandoned girl named Soledad became the Awful Grandmother. Soledad comes from a family of shawl-makers, and her most significant possession is a rebozo caramelo, a silk shawl whose striped design, when she unfurls it after her husband's death, evokes "the past . . . the days to come. All swirling together like the stripes." Wearing it years later to her parents' 30th anniversary, Lala brings the fringe to her lips and tastes "cooked pumpkin familiar and comforting and good, reminding me I'm connected to so many people, so many." Cisneros' keen eye enlivens descriptions of everything from Chicago's famed Maxwell Street flea market to Soledad's sun-stroked house on Destiny Street. (The author riffs playfully throughout on the double meaning of destino, as either "destiny" or "destination"; it's hard to imagine that the simultaneous Spanish-language edition will be as stylistically original as this casually bilingual text.) Melodrama abounds, and the narrator doesn't disdain her tale's links to Mexico's famed telenovelas. In one of many entertaining footnotes, vehicles for historical and biographical background as well as the author's opinions, she insists that those TV soap operas merely "[emulat] Mexican life." The only way to cope is with a robust sense of humor. As Lala's friend Viva says, "You're the author of the telenovela of your life. Comedy or tragedy? Choose."Readers here get both: "Life was cruel. And hilarious all at once."First printing of 150,000 Copyright Kirkus 2002 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved
Publishers Weekly Reviews
"Uncle Fat-Face's brand-new used white Cadillac, Uncle Baby's green Impala, Father's red Chevrolet station wagon" the parade of cars that ushers in Cisneros's first novel since The House on Mango Street (1984) is headed to Mexico City from Chicago, bearing three Mexican-American families on their yearly visit to Awful Grandmother and Little Grandfather. Celaya or "Lala," the youngest child of seven and the only daughter of Inocencio and Zoila Reyes, charts the family's movements back and forth across the border and through time in this sprawling, kaleidoscopic, Spanish-laced tale. The sensitive and observant Lala feels lost in the noisy shuffle, but she inherits the family stories from her grandmother, who comes from a clan of shawl makers and throughout her life has kept her mother's unfinished striped shawl, or caramelo rebozo, containing all the heartache and joy of her family. When she, and later Lala, wear the rebozo and suck on the fringes, they are reminded of where they come from, and those who came before them. In cramped and ever-changing apartments and houses, the teenaged Lala seeks time and space for self-exploration, finally coming to an understanding of herself through the prism of her grandmother. Cisneros was also the only girl in a family of seven, and this is clearly anautobiographical work. Its testaments to cross-generational trauma and rapture grow repetitive, but Cisneros's irrepressible enthusiasm, inspired riffs on any number of subjects (tortillas, telenovelas, La-Z-Boys, Woolworth's), hilarious accounts of family gatherings and pitch-perfect bilingual dialogue make this a landmark work. (Sept. 30) Forecast: Cisneros is arguably the writer who put Mexican-American culture on the map, and the appearance of her second novel after nearly 20 years (she is also the author of two poetry collections and a short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek) will be a major literary event. A 20-city author tour and an extensive ad/promo campaign should feed the fire, and a 150,000 first printing is planned. Orale! Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
School Library Journal Reviews
Adult/High School-A rich family tale, based on Cisneros's own childhood. Although lengthy, the book will appeal to many teens, particularly girls, because of its compelling coming-of-age theme and its array of eccentric, romantic characters. Celaya Reyes, called LaLa, is the youngest and the only girl among seven siblings. The book follows her from infancy to adolescence as she grows up in a noisy, disputatious, and loving clan of Mexican Americans struggling to be successful in the United States while remaining true to their cultural heritage. The Reyes's annual car journey from Chicago to Mexico City for a visit with the matriarch known as "The Awful Grandmother" is both a trial and a treat for LaLa. The imaginative and sensitive girl often feels lost within the family hilarity and histrionics, but she gradually forms an uneasy bond with her grandmother, inheriting from her the family stories, legends, and scandals. Eventually LaLa fashions these into a weave of "healthy lies" that chronicles the movements and adventures, both factual and imaginary, of several lively generations above and below the border. Her telling is a skillful blending of many narrative threads, creating a whole as colorful and charming as the heirloom striped shawl that gives the novel its title.-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.