Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA by Julia Alvarez

[afterannabel.livejournal.com]

3) Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA by Julia Alvarez

I have mixed feelings about this book. My biggest complaint was that I was often frustrated by Alvarez's use of Spanish words and idioms, of which she rarely provided translation. I took Spanish on and off in high school and college, and some words' meanings are intuitive (familia) or obvious from the context, so that was helpful. But it made me stumble many times throughout the book. I really liked the fact that Alvarez dug deeper and explored how young Latina women in America struggle with incorporating both cultures into their lives in meaningful ways, without compromising themselves.

Comments

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

The misunderstandings are part of the point--it's a way of illustrating bilingualism and living in several cultures simultaneously, which leads to a) needing to explain yourself constantly to people who lack one or more of your cultural backgrounds, and b) being confused yourself, unable to "translate" things from your childhood to your adult life, for example. So by using that in their writing, these writers are playing around with understanding and meaning. They're actually not necessarily trying to explain everything; rather, they're experimenting with how much of a story you can tell when (some of) your readers don't understand everything.

I would probably give up and find something else. I'm sure that you're right and that the confusion is the point...but I don't WANT to read a novel or a non-fiction book and be confused. So I would figure that the book had an invisible sign--"no non-Hispanics need apply"--and go find something that might not be as good but which would, at least, be comprehensible.

It's actually different from the Golden Age detective novels, where the use of French sometimes seems more of a way to show off an education.

It comes across the same way to me, though. "I'm smarter than you. I know a language that you don't. And I don't WANT you to understand me, so I'm going to speak as much as I can in words and phrases that I know you won't comprehend. And I won't translate a thing."

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I would probably give up and find something else. I'm sure that you're right and that the confusion is the point...but I don't WANT to read a novel or a non-fiction book and be confused. So I would figure that the book had an invisible sign--"no non-Hispanics need apply"--and go find something that might not be as good but which would, at least, be comprehensible.

I get that it might feel really frustrating. Honestly though, you haven't read Alvarez, or you said so upthread, and she doesn't actually use that much Spanish. The phrases are not all that difficult to look up, either. Of course it's your prerogative to choose other novels to read (it's not like you need anyone's approval for that) but I have to object to this:


It comes across the same way to me, though. "I'm smarter than you. I know a language that you don't. And I don't WANT you to understand me, so I'm going to speak as much as I can in words and phrases that I know you won't comprehend. And I won't translate a thing."

Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers learned French as part of a very prestigious university education. Julia Alvarez learned English in an environment where her mother tongue had no status, where she was constantly bullied for being Latina, where English was enormously difficult and American culture was very hard to understand. The fact that she turns it around in her writing isn't an effort to present herself as smarter than her readers, it's an attempt to represent the way reality works for people who have similar experiences. If we don't (and I don't--I'm bilingual but my cultural background is solidly Western), we have to contend with being confused and either look things up or choose to read something else.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Honestly though, you haven't read Alvarez, or you said so upthread, and she doesn't actually use that much Spanish.

Actually, I didn't say whether I'd read Alvarez. But you're right. I haven't. I'll give her a shot and see what I think.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Ah, my bad, you said "it doesn't seem like," which was what made me assume you hadn't read it and then I didn't double-check to see whether you actually had said so outright. It'd be interesting to see what you think.

[afterannabel.livejournal.com]

I circled phrases and words I didn't know as I read the book and afterwards looked them all up. There were only two or three that I couldn't find easily through Google.

[omnivorously.livejournal.com]

I would figure that the book had an invisible sign--"no non-Hispanics need apply"--and go find something that might not be as good but which would, at least, be comprehensible.

That would probably not be indicated in a book which is WRITTEN IN ENGLISH except for a few phrases and words.

[sophinisba]

I would figure that the book had an invisible sign--"no non-Hispanics need apply"

I disagree with this. For one thing, there are Latinos who don't speak Spanish and Spanish speakers who aren't Latino. But also, as others have said, this is a book written in English with some Spanish words and phrases that you can look up in a dictionary or on the Internet if you want to get all the meaning you can. She's writing about her culture and part of that culture is bilingualism and codeswitching, so it makes sense to me that that would be part of her writing as well.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

What's codeswitching?

[sophinisba]

Ack, I guess I should have spelled that with a hyphen. Here's the Wikipedia article, but basically it's when multilingual people switch between languages within the same conversation.

One of the things it mentions in that article is that in the past linguists considered it substandard language use but they've since come to believe it's a normal thing that's appropriate in some contexts. A lot of US Latino writers have grown up not only being told by English speakers that they shouldn't speak Spanish but being told by Spanish speakers (especially upper-class Spanish speakers) that they shouldn't code-switch, that their way of speaking and writing is inferior to real. Spanish. Mixing Spanish with English in their literature can be a way of contesting that voice of authority, of saying, "No, my language is legitimate." For me that makes the situation of Latino writers using Spanish a lot different from British authors using French, though I can see where it would be equally frustrating for some readers.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Ah. I hadn't heard of code-switching before. That article makes sense, and I can see why Alvarez would be doing it in her writing.

(And I've certainly heard the "Puerto Rican/Cuban/Mexican/Latin American Spanish isn't REAL Spanish" argument, just as I've heard the "Quebecois French isn't REAL French" bit. I can see that hearing that your language wasn't quite real would be annoying, because it would mean that you weren't quite real either.)

Okay. I think I'm beginning to get this. Thank you.

And as I said upthread, I'm going to look for her books in the library and see for myself what I think.

[sophinisba]

Cool, I hope you enjoy her books! I haven't read the book being reviewed here but I liked the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a story about an immigrant family, and loved In the Time of the Butterflies, a historical novel about young women who opposed the Trujillo dictatorship in the D.R. :)