Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros's first novel since her celebrated The House on Mango Street, weaves a large yet intricate pattern, much like the decorative fringe on a rebozo, the traditional Mexican shawl. Through the eyes of young Celaya, or Lala, the Reyes family saga twists and turns over three generations of truths, half-truths, and outright lies. And, like Celaya's grandmother's prized caramelo (striped) rebozo, so is "the universe a cloth, and all humanity interwoven.... Pull one string and the whole thing comes undone." The Reyes clan, from Awful Grandmother Soledad and her favorite son Inocencio to Celaya, follow their destinies from Mexico City to the U.S. armed forces, jobs upholstering furniture, and to Chicago and San Antonio. Celaya gathers and retells, in over 80 chapters, the stories that reinforce her family's, and subsequently her own, identity as they travel between the U.S.-Mexican border and within the United States. Rich with sensory descriptions and animated conversations and peppered with Mexican cultural and historical details, this novel can hardly contain itself. Also an acclaimed poet, Cisneros writes fiercely and thoroughly, and her characters enter and exit the page with uncommon humanity. Although the book is long--over 400 pages plus a relevant U.S.-Mexico chronology--in many ways it's not long enough. The world of the 20th-century Mexican family, and of the Reyeses in particular, is as complicated, timeless, and satisfying as our own family stories. --Emily Russin

From Publishers Weekly
With the ability to make listeners laugh out loud with her humor, get lumps in their throats with her poignancy and leave them thinking about her characters long after they've hit the stop button, Cisneros is a master storyteller and performer. Her sweeping tale of the Reyes family, with the charmingly innocent Lala Reyes at its center, moves from 1920s Mexico City and Acapulco to 1950s Chicago, all the while grounding the family's whimsical events with "notes" to help readers understand the greater significance of, say, a nightclub singer who snagged Lala's grandfather's heart or the Mexican government's initiative to build a network of highways throughout the country. Cisneros (The House on Mango Street) reads her flowing text in an often ebullient voice, recounting the sights and sounds of Mexico City's boisterous streets or performing one of the many grand-scale arguments Lala's parents have. Her voices are marvelous. She perfectly portrays the Awful Grandmother's bitterness (the old lady loved to remind her son, "Wives come and go, but mothers, you have only one!") and sweetly croons the birthday songs Lala and her brothers sing to their father. This is a treat of an audio, combining a fantastic narrative with an equally excellent reading.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-A rich family tale, based on Cisneros's own childhood. Although lengthy, the book will appeal to many teens, particularly girls, because of its compelling coming-of-age theme and its array of eccentric, romantic characters. Celaya Reyes, called LaLa, is the youngest and the only girl among seven siblings. The book follows her from infancy to adolescence as she grows up in a noisy, disputatious, and loving clan of Mexican Americans struggling to be successful in the United States while remaining true to their cultural heritage. The Reyes's annual car journey from Chicago to Mexico City for a visit with the matriarch known as "The Awful Grandmother" is both a trial and a treat for LaLa. The imaginative and sensitive girl often feels lost within the family hilarity and histrionics, but she gradually forms an uneasy bond with her grandmother, inheriting from her the family stories, legends, and scandals. Eventually LaLa fashions these into a weave of "healthy lies" that chronicles the movements and adventures, both factual and imaginary, of several lively generations above and below the border. Her telling is a skillful blending of many narrative threads, creating a whole as colorful and charming as the heirloom striped shawl that gives the novel its title.Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
With this new work about a Mexican American family of shawl-makers the most beautiful of their creations being the caramelo Cisneros will undoubtedly prove once again why she received a so-called MacArthur genius award. With a 150,000-copy first printing. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
"Tell me a story, even if it's a lie." So begins Sandra Cisneros's delightful second novel. The Reyes clan piles into three cars to make a trip to the "other side" (Mexico City) to visit the Awful Grandmother and the Little Grandfather. Celaya (Lala) Reyes is the youthful observer of her family's vida loca. Cisneros has written a poetic, fictionalized family saga made memorable by a raucous collection of characters. They slip in and out of time, weaving truth and "healthy lies" into the family's history. The story overflows with music, food, fantasy, and fiesta. Narrating the tale herself, Cisneros is most successful in her interpretation of the young Lala. Her reading lends charm and authenticity to this witty gem of a novel. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
*Starred Review* The author's long-awaited second novel (following The House on Mango Street, 1984) is a sweeping, fictionalized history of her Mexican American family. When Celaya (or "Lala") Reyes takes a family vacation from Chicago to Mexico City, she begins a journey from girl to young adult and from the present to the past. Generous digressions trace roots and branches on the luxuriant family tree, telling the tales of ancestors, family members, and sometimes even walk-on players. The book's title refers to an unfinished, candy-colored rebozo (shawl) that comes to symbolize both the interconnectedness of all these individual histories and the author's act of weaving them together. Still, the focus is on Lala, her papa, and the Awful Grandmother, the last a truly wonderful literary creation-- a despotic matriarch guaranteed to frighten young and old but whose wounds, once revealed, are a revelation. By book's end, the different threads of these three lives are snugged into a tight knot. Cisneros combines a real respect for history with a playful sense of how lies often tell the greatest truths--the characters, narrator, and author all play fast and loose with the facts. But, Lala learns, the ability to write your own history also means you must take special care in choosing your fate. The author's gorgeous prose, on-a-dime turns of phrase, and sumptuous scene-setting make this an unforgettable read. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
«Caramelo es una epopeya tradicional, alocada, cómica y maravillosa sobre los inmigrantes mexicanos narrada por una curiosa niña que es poseedora de una sabiduría de abuela. Comenzando por la carretera 66, ésta es una versión salsificada de la odisea de la familia Joad, que realiza un viaje de ida y vuelta en zigzag desde Chicago hasta la Ciudad de México. Todo en ella es acerca de la vida y de lo que significa trabajar honradamente. Es un hermoso relato sobre todos los inmigrantes que se encuentran entre el aquí y el allá».
?Studs Terkel, autor de Will the Circle be Unbroken?

«Los escritores revelan secretos y al hacerlo, reafirman las verdades de nuestras vidas, la fuerza del amor, el prodigio de la fortaleza y el poder de las
generaciones. En Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros hace resonar mi sangre con su canto. Sus palabras son dulces y satisfacen, no por lo azucaradas sino porque son tan sustanciosas como la carne sobre el hueso. Conozco bien el tipo de familia que describe: gente que ama y que odia con toda el alma, que lucha y se reinventa con cada nueva generación. Cisneros les ha hecho justicia sobre la página; nos los ofrece íntegros».
?Dorothy Allison, autora de Bastard Out of Carolina

«Sandra Cisneros es como una abeja que extrae miel de flores antiguas. Y Caramelo es como un caramelo mexicano que chupas despacito, saboreándolo debajo de la lengua durante horas; sin embargo, nunca es pegajoso, nunca es empalagoso ni sentimental. Cisneros posee la habilidad más difícil: permitir imaginarnos aquello que nunca existió».
?Elena Poniatowska, autora de Hasta no verte, Jesús mío

«Éste es un tren lleno de gente, un tren de nunca parar que va y viene entre México y los Estados Unidos, a través de las fronteras de la tierra y del tiempo: lleno de voces, lleno de música, hecho de memoria, haciendo vida».
?Eduardo Galeano, autor de Memoria del fuego

Book Description

Lala Reyes' grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo --, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala's possession. The novel opens with the Reyes' annual car trip -- a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels -- from Chicago to "the other side": Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family's stories, separating the truth from the "healthy lies" that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the "Paris of the New World" to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties -- and finally, to Lala's own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas.

Caramelo is a vital, wise, romantic tale of homelands, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Vivid, funny, intimate, historical, it is a brilliant work destined to become a classic: a major new novel from one of our country's most beloved storytellers.

Language Notes
Text: Spanish (translation)
Original Language: English

FROM OUR EDITORS

"This book," Eduardo Galeano writes, "is a crowded train, a never-stop round-trip train going and coming back and going again between Mexico and the U.S.A., across the frontiers of land and time: full of voices, full of music, made from memory, making life." Anyone who has ever read a Sandra Cisneros novel knows these large families, with their noisy gatherings, and their weekend feasts of renewal.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The celebrated author of The House on Mango Street gives us an extraordinary new novel, told in language of blazing originality: a multigenerational story of a Mexican-American family whose voices create a dazzling weave of humor, passion, and poignancy–the very stuff of life.
Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl, makers. The striped caramelo rebozo is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip–a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels–from Chicago to “the other side”: Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the “Paris of the New World” to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties–and, finally, to Lala’s own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas.
Caramelo is a romantic tale of homelands, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Vivid, funny, intimate, historical, it is a brilliant work destined to become a classic: a major new novel from one of our country’s most beloved storytellers.

Author Biography: Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, she has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Lannan Foundation Literary Award and the American Book Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of The House on Mango Street, Loose Woman, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, and a children's book, Hairs/Pelitos.

SPANISH LANGUAGE COMMENTARY

La célebre autora de La casa en Mango Street nos ofrece una nueva y extraordinaria novela narrada en un lenguaje de una originalidad arrolladora: es la historia de varias generaciones de una familia méxicoamericana cuyas voces crean un deslumbrante y vivo tapiz de humor y de pasión, hecho con la esencia misma de la vida.

La abuela de Lala Reyes es descendiente de una familia de afamados reboceros. El rebozo de rayas color caramelo es el más bello de todos y aquél que llega a pertenecer a Lala, al igual que la historia familiar que éste representa. La novela comienza con el viaje anual en automóvil de los Reyes --una caravana desbordante de niños, risas y pleitos-- desde Chicago hasta el ￯﾿ﾽotro lado￯﾿ﾽ: la Ciudad de México.

Es aquí que Lala cada año escucha las historias de su familia y trata de separar la verdad de las ￯﾿ﾽmentiras sanas￯﾿ﾽ que han resonado de una generación a otra. Viajamos desde la Ciudad de México, que era el ￯﾿ﾽParís del Nuevo Mundo￯﾿ﾽ a las calles llenas de música de Chicago en los albores de los locos años veinte y, finalmente, a la difícil adolescencia de Lala en la tierra no tan exactamente prometida de San Antonio, Texas.

Caramelo es una historia sabia, vital y romántica, sobre el lugar de origen, algunas veces real, algunas veces imaginado. Vívida, graciosa, íntima e histórica, es una obra brillante destinada a convertirse en un clásico: una nueva novela de gran importancia de una de las escritoras más queridas de nuestro país.

SYNOPSIS

Sandra Cisneros, the award-winning author of the highly acclaimed The House on Mango Street and several other esteemed works, has produced a stunning new novel, Caramelo. This long-anticipated novel is an all-embracing epic of family history, Mexican history, the Mexican-American immigrant experience, and a young Mexican-American woman's road to adulthood. We hope the following questions, discussion topics, and author biography enhance your group's reading of this captivating and masterful literary work.

Born the seventh child and only daughter to Zoila and Inocencio Reyes, Celaya Reyes spent her childhood traveling back and forth between her family's home in Chicago to her father's birth home in Mexico City, Mexico. Celaya's intimidating paternal grandmother, adored and revered by Celaya's father, dominates these visits, and Celaya dubs her the Awful Grandmother. Celaya's story begins one summer in Mexico when she was just a little girl, but soon her girlhood experiences segue back in time–to before Celaya was born–to her grandparents' history. Celaya traces the Awful Grandmother's lonely and unhappy childhood in a Mexico ravaged by the Mexican revolution of 1911, her meeting and ultimate union with Celaya's grandfather, Narciso Reyes (the Little Grandfather), and the birth of their first and favorite son, Celaya's father, Inocencio. Inocencio Reyes moves to the United States as a young man, and soon meets Zoila, a Mexican-American woman, with her own colorful mixed-Mexican parentage. Celaya develops the portrait of her parents' love-based, but volatile, marriage and the growth of their own Mexican-American family. After the Little Grandfather's death, the familymoves the Awful Grandmother up to the United States with them, first to Chicago, then to San Antonio. Soon afterward, the Awful Grandmother dies, leaving her teenage granddaughter to struggle with her unresolved relationship with her late grandmother. Through her grandmother's history, Celaya discovers her own Mexican-American heritage, enabling her ultimately to carve out an identity of her own in the two countries she inhabits and that inhabit her–Mexico and America.

As the family's self-appointed historian, or storyteller, Celaya's tale weaves Mexican social, political, and military history around intimate family secrets and the stormy and often mysterious relationships among multiple generations of family members. The marvelous, often riotous cast of characters that march through time and across the North American continent ranges from close family members to Mexican-American icons of popular culture that have random encounters with the Reyes family. (Remember Senor Wences with his painted talking hand (p. 224)?  The spirited, likeable characters, while at times mythological in their characteristics, are always intensely human in their flaws and emotions. While each character can claim equal footing in the Reyes web of family and history, each holds a role of differing significance in Celaya's personal odyssey of connecting to her roots and carving her future.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

With the ability to make listeners laugh out loud with her humor, get lumps in their throats with her poignancy and leave them thinking about her characters long after they've hit the stop button, Cisneros is a master storyteller and performer. Her sweeping tale of the Reyes family, with the charmingly innocent Lala Reyes at its center, moves from 1920s Mexico City and Acapulco to 1950s Chicago, all the while grounding the family's whimsical events with "notes" to help readers understand the greater significance of, say, a nightclub singer who snagged Lala's grandfather's heart or the Mexican government's initiative to build a network of highways throughout the country. Cisneros (The House on Mango Street) reads her flowing text in an often ebullient voice, recounting the sights and sounds of Mexico City's boisterous streets or performing one of the many grand-scale arguments Lala's parents have. Her voices are marvelous. She perfectly portrays the Awful Grandmother's bitterness (the old lady loved to remind her son, "Wives come and go, but mothers, you have only one!") and sweetly croons the birthday songs Lala and her brothers sing to their father. This is a treat of an audio, combining a fantastic narrative with an equally excellent reading. Based on the Knopf hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 12, 2002). (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Alan Review - Melissa Noeth

Sandra Cisneros's protagonist, Celaya (Lala) Reyes, like Cisneros herself, experiences much of her childhood in Chicago. Lala's father is a furniture upholsterer who moves his family from Mexico City to Chicago and then to San Antonio in search of a better life. With six older brothers, Lala is her parents' youngest child and only daughter in a novel largely about family history and family stories (not necessarily the same thing) and how members of generations of a family interact. The title comes from Lala's fascination with her friend Candelaria's skin color, which is caramelo in Spanish, or caramel in English; Lala notices the various family branches of her relatives have various skin tones, depending on their heritage. Anyone who has ever gone on vacation to visit a family matriarch can relate to the Reyes family trips from Chicago to Mexico City to visit the "Awful Grandmother." And anyone who lives among multiple cultures will also relate to Lala's experience as a member of at least two very distinct cultures: Mexican and American. Due to its length and complexity, Caramelo may be more popular with older, more advanced high school readers. 2002, Knopf, 439 pp., Ages young adult.

KLIATT - Nola Theiss

This novel tells the story of Carmelo's life as a child of Mexican parents, growing up in Chicago and Texas, but steeped in the ancient culture of her family. Her childhood summers are spent in Mexico City when her entire family would make the long trip from Chicago in a caravan of cars to Awful Grandmother's house on Destiny Street. Her life becomes a blend of Mexican and American culture, simmered in the often boiling emotions of family love and spiced with her own personality and growing pains. The experience of being a child of immigrants, with its richness and identity crises, is told lovingly and with humor and in a language filled with images of Mexico and 1950s and '60s America. Jumping from Carmelo's childhood to the history of her grandparents and parents, to her adolescence, Cisneros creates a melange of family that retains the flavor of each individual character but expresses that strange blend that identifies each family as unique. KLIATT Codes: SA-Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002, Random House, Vintage, 439p., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

Cisneros is a master of the short, imagistic piece depicting Mexican American life from an innocent, childlike point of view, as exhibited in her first novel, The House on Mango Street. In this, her quasi-autobiographical second work, the attempt to form similar fragments into more of a narrative whole presents some wonderful moments but ultimately falls far short. Part of the problem is embedded in her effort to tell a multigenerational story, flitting back and forth between characters with similar names, at various periods in their lives. But more to the point, the confusion stems from the lack of a good story to tell (unless we count the contrived device of a granddaughter trying to capture and embellish her grandmother's stories, or hints at an incident that came close to destroying her parents' marriage). These tapes require one's full attention, but the tale (with much repetition and snail-paced progression, hence little drama) refuses to captivate. What comes through as enthusiasm on the printed page seems overdramatized here, as Cisneros's voice rises and falls, attempting in vain to re-create each character's emotions. Since the book is nearly 450 pages long, a severely abridged audio version might be much more enjoyable.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-A rich family tale, based on Cisneros's own childhood. Although lengthy, the book will appeal to many teens, particularly girls, because of its compelling coming-of-age theme and its array of eccentric, romantic characters. Celaya Reyes, called LaLa, is the youngest and the only girl among seven siblings. The book follows her from infancy to adolescence as she grows up in a noisy, disputatious, and loving clan of Mexican Americans struggling to be successful in the United States while remaining true to their cultural heritage. The Reyes's annual car journey from Chicago to Mexico City for a visit with the matriarch known as "The Awful Grandmother" is both a trial and a treat for LaLa. The imaginative and sensitive girl often feels lost within the family hilarity and histrionics, but she gradually forms an uneasy bond with her grandmother, inheriting from her the family stories, legends, and scandals. Eventually LaLa fashions these into a weave of "healthy lies" that chronicles the movements and adventures, both factual and imaginary, of several lively generations above and below the border. Her telling is a skillful blending of many narrative threads, creating a whole as colorful and charming as the heirloom striped shawl that gives the novel its title.-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Read all 7 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Sandra Cisneros is like a bee that extracts new honey from old flowers. And Caramelo is like a Mexican candy that you suck slowly, savoring it under your tongue for hours; yet it is never sticky, never sugary nor sentimental. Cisneros possesses that most difficult ability-to allow us to imagine that which never existed. — Elena Poniastowska

It's a crazy, funny and remarkable folk-saga of Mexican migrants told by a curious little girl who has the wisdom of an old grandma. Beginning on Highway 66, it's a salsified variant on the Joad family's odyssey, zigzagging from Chicago to Mexico City and back. It's all about la vida, the life of 'honorable labor.' It's a beautiful tale of all migrants caught between here and there. And it's a real lalapalooza! — Studs Terkel

This book is a crowded train, a never-stop round-trip train going and coming back and going again between Mexico and the USA, across the frontiers of land and time: full of voices, full of music, made from memory, making life. — Eduardo Galeano

Writers tell secrets, and in so doing, reaffirm the truths of our lives, the strength of love, the marvel of endurance, and the power of generations. In Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros sings to my blood. Her words are sweet and filling, not sugar-driven but as substantial as meat on the bone. Hers is the kind of family I know well -- people who love and hate with their whole souls, who struggle and make over with every generation. She has done them justice on the page; she has given them to us whole. — Dorothy Allison