When she examines her family history, she is encouraging us to inspect our own families, too. Her family, she discovers, were Jewish refugees from the Spanish Inquisition who took on the trappings of Catholicism in order to survive.Īlthough the essays are in many ways personal, they are also universal. In the process of digging and sifting, she is frequently surprised by what she unearths. Loosely linked by an exploration of the many meanings of “family,” these essays move in a broad arc from the stories and experiences of those close to her to those whom she wonders about, like Andrea Yates, a mother who drowned her children. Thus begins a lyrical and entirely absorbing collection of personal essays by esteemed Chicana writer and gifted storyteller Kathleen Alcalá. And we will be here when they go away, he would say, and it will be part of Mexico again. We were here when the white people came, the Spaniards, then the Americans. When he made that gesture, all was cleared away in my mind’s eye to leave the hazy impression of a better place. My father would say this with a sweeping gesture, taking in the smog, the beautiful mountains, the cars and houses and fast-food franchises. But, my parents said, this, too, was once part of Mexico. This was sometimes modified to “Mexican American,” since I was born in California, and thus automatically a U.S.
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