Family is a term that everyone understands, and the word has connotations for everyone. Family can mean parents, siblings, aunts and uncles. It can also mean friends, best friends, and role models. Family can take on any shape or form, and is a little bit different for each person that believes in the word. The term has different connotations in Latino culture as well. In Latino culture, family is one of the most important aspects of life, and is present throughout Latino literature. In novels such as Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Dreaming In Cuban by Cristina Garcia, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, family is central to the main characters, and family is the driving force behind many of the decisions the characters make. These novels give the reader insight into different Latino cultures' views of family, since each book is from a different society in Latin America. The theme of family is used in the novels to guide the characters through life, love, and growing up.
Family in Bless Me, Ultima
One of the classics of Latino Literature continues to be Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, which has been around since the early 1970s. It is the story of a young boy, Antonio Marez's, journey through life, trying to find out who he is and who he will become. He is a seven year old boy that is torn between two destinies that his family has for him. His mother wants him to be a priest, a man of learning like the members of her family before. His father wants him to be a vaquero, a cowboy of the llano (plains) of New Mexico, like his family before him. Antonio is split down the middle, unsure of how he can please both of his parents and his family. The beginning of the novel, the reader is introduced to the importance of family in the novel: Antonio's father, Gabriel, moves away from the llano that has been his home forever for the village of Guadalupe at the insistence of Maria, Antonio's mother (Anaya 2). Maria wanted to send her children to school so they would have a good education in the city, rather than the llano which she despised. Antonio's family is not always present in the novel, though. It is common for his family to appear when he needs them most, such as his brothers, who are central to Antonio's struggle. At the beginning of the novel, they are off fighting WWII for the US before they return to Guadalupe (Anaya 65). Often, Antonio has prophetic dreams about his brothers, and then they appear, in the same situation as Antonio saw them in his dreams. His parents come into the story of Antonio when the topic of his future appears. His father and mother are symbolic of the two futures each side of the family wants for Antonio. Antonio's sisters, however, are not prominent characters, and are rather flat in their development.
Antonio's biological family is important to his growth, but it is Ultima, the cuandera who has the most influence. She is the woman who birthed Antonio and his siblings, and she comes to live with Antonio's family due to her old age and care of the people (Anaya 1). Ultima is a cuandera, a “shaman”, learned in the art of traditional healing, and she becomes one of the most important people in Antonio's life. She is like a grandmother and mother to Antonio: she is there for him when he sees something bad, such as the death of Lupito, a man with post-traumatic stress disorder (Anaya 26).
According to Thomas Vallejos in his article “Ritual Process and the Family in the Chicano Novel,” author Richard Rodriguez states the novel is not a form that is capable of emulating Chicano life/culture, and Chicano writers are unable to show Latino family life, and instead only describe the transition between cultures (Vallejos 5). Vallejos rebuffs this generalization of novels, citing Bless Me, Ultima as a Chicano novel that in fact shows the exact opposite of what Rodriguez claims, as it is a novel who's “structure is based upon the endurance of [familial and communal] values” (Vallejos 5). Ultima is the ultimate source of values in the novel, since she is the one that stops the family feud over Antonio's future; she is also the blending of the traditional culture of the llano with the newer culture of mainstream America. The novel does set itself apart from American culture however, since the only references to the US comes from Antonio's brothers fighting in WWII and Antonio going to school, where he must learn to speak English. Vallejos claims that the reason the brothers are associated with mainstream American culture is to contrast Antonio's “loyalty to family and community” (Vallejos 9). Anaya's novel is one that does not follow Rodriguez's claim that Chicano literature is unable to capture Chicano life without basing the story line on the transition between the home culture and American culture. Instead, it is a novel that uses the past to move Antonio into his future and integrate himself in his family how he sees fit (Vallejos 10).
Family in Dreaming In Cuban
Family has a different dynamic in Dreaming in Cuban than it does in Bless Me, Ultima. Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia is a novel that focuses on three generations of Cuban women, in both Cuba and the United States. Celia del Pino, the matriarch of the family, lives in Cuba with her youngest daughter Felicia and Felicia's three children Luz, Milagro and Ivanito. Celia's oldest daughter Lourdes del Puente lives in self-appointed exile in New York, with her daughter Pilar, who is central to the novel. Pilar is often thought of as the narrator of the story, writing down the life and family history of her family. According to Rocio Davis' article“Back to the Future: Mothers, Languages, and Homes in Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban,” the novel is a text that deals primarily with the relationships of mothers and daughters, and this relationship is necessary for the daughters and mothers to understand each other (Davis 60). Davis also states that novels that have female protagonists present the daughters as people that need to continue the maternal stories of their families, and this idea is ever present in Dreaming in Cuban (Davis 60). Pilar is a girl that feels at odds with her mother, and feels a close connection to her grandmother Celia, even though they live extremely far apart (Garcia 29).
Davis states that in the novel, Lourdes and Pilar must return to Cuba so they can reaffirm their ideas of motherhood and better their lives in America (Davis 61). When Pilar returns to Cuba, she realizes that even though she thought she belonged there instead of in New York with her mother, she decides that in fact she belongs in the US more than she does in Cuba (Garcia 239). She realizes that her family ties are not to the island where she was born, but the land where she grew up. When she realizes that revolutionary Cuba is not where she needs to be, she finally comes to the same understanding her mother had. The differing views on the revolution for the mother-daughter relationship of Lourdes and Pilar was one that brought much contention, but it is eventually settled in Cuba, and Pilar even goes as far as defying her grandmother and allowing Ivanito to escape the island through the Peruvian Embassy (Garcia 242).
One important point that Davis points out is the mirrored relationships of the different mother-daughter relationships. Lourdes leaves Cuba because of the revolution that is happening there, and Celia stays on the island because she supports the revolution completely. Celia goes as far as to call Lourdes a “traitor” for leaving (Garcia 26). The relationship between the two women is reflected in the relationship Lourdes has with Pilar. Pilar is a strong-willed woman that butts heads with her mother, and is always at odds, except for a few moments throughout the novel, such as when Lourdes stands up for Pilar's punk painting of the Statue of Liberty (Garcia 144). This is due to a different view of right and wrong. Lourdes is a woman who sees “strictly in black-and-white” and even acknowledges the fact herself (Garcia 26, 129). Pilar is an artist, and tries to look past the black-and-white view. Celia and Felicia are not bonded in the revolution though. Even though Felicia still lives in Cuba, she is ambivalent to the revolution, and instead begins to deteriorate mentally throughout the novel. The relationship between Celia and Felicia eventually ends with Celia trying to take Felicia's three children from her, to better their lives.
Davis' article notes another prominent family dynamic that is not obviously clear in the novel: the different generations have a special relationship with the father figures (Davis 63). Lourdes is the most obvious example: she and Jorge, her father, have a much better relationship than Celia and Lourdes. Jorge is the one that loves Lourdes after she is born, since Celia despises her and claims she “will not remember [Lourdes'] name.” (Garcia 43). Pilar and her father are in the same type of relationship. Pilar feels closer to her father, since they are both under the watchful and ever vigilant eye of Lourdes. To a small extent, Luz and Milagro, Felicia's twin daughters, have a better relationship with their father than with Felicia. When they have the opportunity to leave Felicia's home and visit their father, they do not think twice about it and head to see him (Garcia 123). He is the father they loved and they hate their mother so much, they want to do anything to get away from her.
Family in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Unlike Bless Me, Ultima and Dreaming in Cuban, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has a different take on the meaning of family, and what is needed in the novel to constitute family. In the novel overall, love is more prominent than family, but it is due to family that love is so important. Oscar is a fat, nerdy Dominican boy living in New Jersey, and all he wants to do is find love. It is because Oscar is a Dominican boy, and Dominican culture is heavily steeped in machismo (hyper-masculinity). From an early age, Oscar is expected to be a player, a boy that has all the ladies, and he succeeds for a time, reaching two girlfriends at one point like a good Dominican boy (Diaz 11, 13). He is not close as close to his mother in the novel as he is to his sister, and he has absolutely no relationship with his father. His grandmother,La Inca, is a woman that is present in his life, but does not have a huge impact until the end, when he ventures back to the Dominican Republic to find Ybon, the quasi-retired prostitute that he falls in love with. He tries to woo her, to make her his own, but in the beginning it does not work. He stays in the DR for 27 days trying to woo Ybon, and he eventually dies for it. Although it is not specifically stated, one of the goals for Oscar was to love Ybon, and perhaps make a family with her. She was the one that he loved the most, the one he wanted, and everything else was second to her. Even his own family, who tried to get him to leave the DR and return to America (Diaz 319). Of course, the tries do not work, and Oscar remains in the DR, away from his family and those that truly love him.
In Ramon Saldivar's article “Historical Fantasy, Speculative Realism, and Postrace Aesthetics in Contemporary American Fiction,” Saldivar calls attention to the mixing of history and fantasy in the novel, the references to both reality and the imaginary (Saldivar 585). Saldivar is referring to the use of the mongoose as a guardian and the cultural context of Trujillo in the novel, but his idea can be transplanted to the theme of family in the novel. Oscar is a Dominican boy who's family is haunted by the fuku, like most Dominican families, and because of that the role of family in his life is different. His mother is dying of cancer and she is a strict, unrelenting woman. His sister is a rebel, a go-getter that wants to be free of the confines of their mother, and Oscar himself is a sci-fi and fantasy nerd that only wants to find love, but can't. His family contains a spectrum of personalities, some that do not get along. These differences can be attributed to the family's past, the fuku that follows them, and the cultural aspect of being Dominican: fantasy and history conspire together to make the destiny of one small, seemingly insignificant man become something less family-oriented and more focused on finding the love of a woman (Saldivar 590).
Through these three novels, the theme of family can be seen and explored as a major aspect of Latino/Chicano culture. It is present in many different forms: between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, sons and parents, lovers, and role models. Family is not limited to just blood; family denotes who is closest to someone, who can be depended on and who is always there for someone. Family is important to literature just as much as it is to the actual culture itself: all a reader need do is look closely and read/watch what is in plain sight.
Works Cited
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. New York: Warner, 1972. Print.
Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead, 2007. Print.
Davis, Rocío G. "Back To The Future: Mothers, Languages, And Homes In Cristina García's Dreaming In Cuban." World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly Of The University Of Oklahoma 74.1 (2000): 60-68. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.
Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York: Ballantine, 1992. Print
Saldívar, Ramón. "Historical Fantasy, Speculative Realism, And Postrace Aesthetics In Contemporary American Fiction." American Literary History 23.3 (2011): 574-599. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.
Vallejos, Thomas. “Ritual Process and the Family in the Chicano Novel.” Melus 10.4 (1983): 5- 16. Web. 14 Apr. 2012
