• Reading Group Guide

CARAMELO, the gorgeous new novel by Sandra Cisneros, begins with a
portrait taken on a summer trip to Acapulco, one of those
spontaneous group shots offered by photographers who comb the beach
to record memories, real or manufactured. All of the members of the
Reyes family are there…all except for Lala, the youngest,
forgotten a few yards away as she happily makes sandcastles. And so
Lala spends the rest of the book painting a portrait of her
own.

It's impossible not to love an author who names her characters "the
Awful Grandmother," "Aunty Light-Skin" and "Uncle Old." Cisneros's
warm, wry humor has been on display since THE HOUSE ON MANGO
STREET, and in her latest blended book (equal parts American and
Mexican influence), she ensnares us again. This is Lala's story,
first and foremost, but it's also the story of so many other things
--- of growing up in two cultures, of growing up in general, of
family life and daily upheaval, of class and racial strife. The
Reyes family travels south to Mexico City each summer to spend time
with Inocencio's parents, his heavy-handed mother and henpecked
father. Thirteen running, screaming kids caught between the Chicago
culture of their daily lives and the Mexican roots of their
parents. Three daughters-in-law left to stew in their own juices
when mama's around. One hundred reasons why, we soon learn,
everything is not OK.

We watch things unfold through Lala's eyes, even the things she was
not there to witness. She is an always-precocious narrator. Of
Aunty Light-Skin's secretarial job, for example, we're told that
she wears beautiful cocktail dresses and high heels, and is picked
up each day by her big-shot boss. Lala overhears her mother and
aunts' ridicule, but does not spell out the details. Readers can
draw their own conclusions about Aunty's "profession." Our narrator
admits her unreliability --- she remembers things that didn't
happen, forgets some that did, and puts others into a different
context. Of a disagreement with her mother, she pictures a dusky
confrontation. But Lala knows it took place during the day.

Lala also guides us through history. She tells the Grandmother's
story, how she became "Awful," before she became proud. She tells
of her grandfather's great lost love, who was most certainly not
her grandmother. She fills holes with her own romantic notions,
adding details and drama where before there were none (in an
amusing twist, the Awful Grandmother plays the interrupting
listener, questioning Lala's every interpretation and insisting
that her granddaughter play up the love story). Through Cisneros's
beautiful prose, the Awful Grandmother becomes vulnerable: "It was
dizzying to decide one's fate, because, to tell the truth, she'd
never made any decision regarding her own life, but rather had
floated and whirled about like a dry leaf in a swirl of foamy
water."

When the Reyeses move from Chicago to San Antonio in Lala's 14th
year, her life only becomes more complicated. So much the better
for the reader. Cisneros's footnotes, explaining Mexican cultural
references and character background, alone are worth the read. Lala
endures the usual miserable adolescence, and Cisneros captures her
petulant voice right down to the apostrophes: "The two guys in
suits think we've stolen something. I mean, how do you like that?
'Cause we're teenagers, 'cause we're brown, 'cause we're not rich
enough, right?"

Cisneros has said she began CARAMELO as a short story, but it kept
growing. The semi-autobiographical work offers a lesson in Mexican
history as well as in how to tell "healthy lies" --- the ones that
don't hurt anyone. The significance of the title surfaces many
times over. It's the color of the rebozo left to Lala when
her grandmother dies; the skin of the servant girl who gives Lala a
later-in-life epiphany; the mixed heritage of a Mexican-American
family that remembers "a country I am homesick for, that doesn't
exist anymore, that never existed." This fictional work of
nonfiction turns out to be mainly fiction after all. Lala tells too
many healthy lies to make it otherwise.

It's impossible not to compare Cisneros's multigenerational tale to
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS or ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, but
unlike Isabel Allende or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cisneros's magic
comes from actual realism. Each word is a brushstroke. Lala's story
is one of construction, and truth, and consequence, but ultimately
one of memory. As her grandfather is once told, "Remembering is the
hand of god. I remember you, therefore I make you immortal." Just
try not to remember Lala Reyes and her colorful family history.
Cisneros has painted quite a picture.