Rebecca A. (qitten) reviewed on + 7 more book reviews
Bildungsroman is an unappealing sounding, ponderously German way to call a coming-of-age novel... a coming-of-age novel, wherein the primary focus of the story is the protagonist's growth from child to adult, a change that is usually awkward and painful and difficult as growing up often is.
This remains one of my favorite coming-of-age stories because of the juxtaposition of worlds. Antonio himself is the junction of all that has come before him.
His father's people are vaqueros, cowboys. His mother's people are sedentary farmers, not wanderers of the empty plain. His mother is quite piously Roman Catholic (and wishes for her fourth son to become a man of learning and a priest). His father is rather piously pragmatic. They live in a "hick town," as his brothers (back from WWII) observe--a southern California settlement at odds with and largely unknown to the broader world.
Into this comes Ultima, an elderly curandera (part shaman, part mystic healer) who comes to live with the family. Through her intervention and the conflict with the family of brujos (witches and evil-doers), Antonio becomes aware of the "pagan" world, for want of a better word. He experiences mystical dreams, meets a pagan god who has gone fishin', and aids Ultima in lifting a curse. We would call this story magical realism, but the chicano culture from which the story springs has been grounded in this sort of natural mysticism. He also sees deaths (more than a child of 7-8 might be expected to), witnesses evil, and watches the lines blur between good and evil and those that use whatever powers or skills are available to them.
It is a powerful, compact little tale that asks the hard questions, and as Antonio finds out, answers aren't so easy to come by.
This remains one of my favorite coming-of-age stories because of the juxtaposition of worlds. Antonio himself is the junction of all that has come before him.
His father's people are vaqueros, cowboys. His mother's people are sedentary farmers, not wanderers of the empty plain. His mother is quite piously Roman Catholic (and wishes for her fourth son to become a man of learning and a priest). His father is rather piously pragmatic. They live in a "hick town," as his brothers (back from WWII) observe--a southern California settlement at odds with and largely unknown to the broader world.
Into this comes Ultima, an elderly curandera (part shaman, part mystic healer) who comes to live with the family. Through her intervention and the conflict with the family of brujos (witches and evil-doers), Antonio becomes aware of the "pagan" world, for want of a better word. He experiences mystical dreams, meets a pagan god who has gone fishin', and aids Ultima in lifting a curse. We would call this story magical realism, but the chicano culture from which the story springs has been grounded in this sort of natural mysticism. He also sees deaths (more than a child of 7-8 might be expected to), witnesses evil, and watches the lines blur between good and evil and those that use whatever powers or skills are available to them.
It is a powerful, compact little tale that asks the hard questions, and as Antonio finds out, answers aren't so easy to come by.
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