We arrive in China by way of San Francisco following Olivia and her half-sister Kwan in Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses. Living on a sphere, it is sometimes easier to travel West to arrive in the East; and halfway around the world is a further destination than all-the-way around the world.
East and West are […]
When we left our travels, we were in Northern Mexico, skirting the border to the US. We travel now to New Mexico, where the people live north of the border, but share a culture with their family to the south.
We’ve been here before with Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima. Like Teresa Urrea in The Hummingbird’s […]
The last time I was in New Orleans was three years ago, which was a year before Katrina blew through town. It’s still the city I remember, filled with family I’ve missed. But it’s also gravely wounded.
I’m here in mourning, and my new journal is filled with eulogies. I visited a cousin who’s been rebuilding […]
Because of Mother’s Day and the recent death of my grandmother, I’ve been thinking a lot about the women in my family. Somehow, each of them is linked in my mind to a kind of food, and the thoughts have been pouring in since I cooked dinner on Friday evening.
I grew up with three grandmothers. […]
It’s a year for big family events - births, graduations, weddings, funerals. Two of my girlfriends will be having babies soon, and another just got married. My nephew is graduating from high school in two weeks, and my young cousin is getting married in August. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about hopes and wishes, […]
Okay, so Gary Jennings’s Aztec doesn’t qualify as magical realism, but I thought since we were here in Northern Mexico that we might talk about the Chichimeca.
So you know how anyone can post on Wikipedia, and you don’t know if what you’re getting is completely accurate? Well, try searching “chichimeca” on Yahoo! You should come […]
Another story that takes place in Northern Mexico is Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate. It’s a tale of being enslaved by tradition, and the quiet and not-so-quiet rebellions against the chains that bind.
It’s Cinco de Mayo weekend, with lots of festivities happening around town. It’s not a huge tradition in Mexico, but here in […]
In The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Luis Alberto Urrea takes us on a journey more than a thousand miles north of Colombia. We start in the state of Sinaloa in Mexico with the Urrea family and The People. From there we travel north again to Sonora, follow holy men into Chihuahua and even venture beyond the Rio […]