culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

ANCA MIHAELA DOBRINESCU
oscillate between the postmodernist interpretation of the self as provisional, as
the nodal point of a network of texts, as discourse, subjected to or subjugated by
the various forces at work in the society and the fragmentary self of the
modernists, whose unity is, however, ultimately recoverable. In Caramelo,
Celaya sees herself as a strand in the interwoven pattern of humanity and tries to
understand her identity by associating it with the pattern of the Mexican rebozo,
which is one of the central symbols of the novel: “I look up, and la Virgen looks
down at me, and, honest to God, this sounds like a lie, but it’s true. The universe
a cloth, and all humanity interwoven. Each and every person connected to me
and me connected to them, like the strands of a rebozo. Pull one string and the
whole thing comes undone. Each person who comes into my life affecting the
pattern, and me affecting theirs.” (Cisneros 2002: 389)
Cisneros confessed “I think writers [she purposely avoids referring to the
Chicano/a writers] are always split between living their life and watching
themselves live it. [which is, as a matter of fact, a typically modernist idea]. I
have to grow spiritually to be able to interpret and to guide. I find myself in the
role of guiding a community.” [closer to the postmodernist view and attitude]
(Cisneros in Kevane, Heredia 2000: 54)
The prologue to Caramelo is fully suggestive of Cisneros oscillating
between the modernist manner of recovering the unity of the self and the self’s
identity and the postmodernist strategies of creating, or rather recreating a self
and its identity at the crossroads of texts and various cultural forces. “The truth,
these stories are nothing but story, bits of string, odds and ends found here and
there, embroidered together to make something new. I have invented what I do
not know and exaggerated what I do to continue the family tradition of telling
healthy lies. If, in the course of my inventing, I have inadvertently stumbled on
the truth, perdónenme.
To write is to ask questions. It doesn’t matter if the answers are true or
puro cuento. After all and everything only the story is remembered, and the truth
fades away like the pale blue ink on a cheap embroidery pattern: Eres Mi Vida,
Sueño Contigo Mi Amor, Suspiro Por Ti, Sólo Tú.” (Cisneros 2002)
The prologue suggestively titled “Disclaimer, or I Don’t Want Her, You
Can Have Her, She’s Too Hocicona for Me” states the author’s artistic faith, on
the one hand, and introduces the reader to the strategies the writer decided on to
construct her work, on the other. It also points to Cisneros’s consciously placing
herself between the tradition of modernism, which she often seems indebted to,
and postmodernism, which she chronologically belongs to. In the prologue, the
artist outlines the theory underlying her novel and introduces herself as a selfaware
artist who also considers herself responsible for recovering her own, as
well as her family’s identity.
Cisneros explores, revives and turns to good account the Mexican
tradition of story telling as well the Mexican excess of sentiment and
sentimentality as present in the melodrama and soaps, or as she puts it in her
novel, in the Mexican telenovela. “What a telenovela our lives are!”, Innocencio
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