Cisneros is aware of her position and its responsibilities, and Caramelo occasionally feels as though she's trying to articulate an entire century of Mexican-American relations.Ĭaramelo is a densely worked generational saga structured as a triptych linked by the voice of Celaya: as a child observing her riotous, fractious, loving family in the first part, set in Mexico an adult writer wrangling tales from her Awful Grandmother's ghost in the second and as a streetwise and vulnerable American adoles cent in the third.

There are 39 million Latinos in the US, but only a handful of Latino authors - others are Julia Alvarez, Oscar Hijuelos and Junot Diaz - are recognised in mainstream America.

With her short-story collection Woman Hollering Creek (1991), she also became the first Chicana writer to be published by a major New York house. A spare and beautiful near-prose-poem about a working-class Latina adolescent, it slowly became a phenomenon: it's now taught all over America and has sold about two million copies in 11 languages, making Cisneros (who began as and still is a poet) the bestselling Latino author in the US. But also something sticky-next to impossible to separate/remove once experienced.Cisneros's first novel, The House on Mango Street, was brought out by a small Houston publisher 18 years ago. It always seems like something that is swirled or coupled with other things to make them better. Prior to reading, the title, for me personally, evoked the notion of caramel, which I associate with sweetness, dessert, and a kind of light-to-dark coppery brown color. It seems like both a marker and celebration of culture and difference whereas, darker skin usually equals lower status/mistreatment/etc., Cisneros seems to celebrate and elevate the color through Lala. Great question, Bretnie! I tried to dogear the passages where the word was used and I still need to go back through them all, but I liked how the word and color are woven throughout the story from skin color (first mentioned as our dear narrator marvels at Candelaria's skin in Part I) to the grandmother's prized rebozo. Mod What are people's thoughts on the title, Caramelo? The word came up a lot in different contexts, which I enjoyed.'

Book caramelo