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
"Uncle Fat-Face's brand-new used white Cadillac, Uncle Baby's green Impala, Father's red Chevrolet station wagon" the parade of cars that ushers in Cisneros's first novel since The House on Mango Street (1984) is headed to Mexico City from Chicago, bearing three Mexican-American families on their yearly visit to Awful Grandmother and Little Grandfather. Celaya or "Lala," the youngest child of seven and the only daughter of Inocencio and Zoila Reyes, charts the family's movements back and forth across the border and through time in this sprawling, kaleidoscopic, Spanish-laced tale. The sensitive and observant Lala feels lost in the noisy shuffle, but she inherits the family stories from her grandmother, who comes from a clan of shawl makers and throughout her life has kept her mother's unfinished striped shawl, or caramelo rebozo, containing all the heartache and joy of her family. When she, and later Lala, wear the rebozo and suck on the fringes, they are reminded of where they come from, and those who came before them. In cramped and ever-changing apartments and houses, the teenaged Lala seeks time and space for self-exploration, finally coming to an understanding of herself through the prism of her grandmother. Cisneros was also the only girl in a family of seven, and this is clearly an autobiographical work. Its testaments to cross-generational trauma and rapture grow repetitive, but Cisneros's irrepressible enthusiasm, inspired riffs on any number of subjects (tortillas, telenovelas, La-Z-Boys, Woolworth's), hilarious accounts of family gatherings and pitch-perfect bilingual dialogue make this a landmark work. Copyright 2002 Cahners 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
"All the energy of a riotous family fiesta. . . . Cisneros is undeniably at her peak.” –The Washington Post

"A glorious book, Caramelo is crowded with the souvenirs and memories of the dramas of everyday life…like an oversized family album, intimate as well as universal."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A joyful, fizzy American novel. . . Soulful, sophisticated and skeptical, full of great one-liners, it is one of those novels that blithely leap across the border between literary and popular fiction.” –New York Times Book Review

"Like Eduardo Galeano, John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, Cisneros writes along the borders where the novel and social history intersect. In this lovingly told and poetic novel, she uses the storytelling art to give the voiceless ones a voice, and to find the border to the past, imbuing the struggles of her family and her countries with the richness of myth.” –Los Angeles Times

“A wonderful book . . . evoking life’s absurdity and possibility, tragedy and transcendence. . . . Combines the thematic richness of the most ambitious literature with the delight in character and plot of the most engrossing page-turner.” –Chicago Sun-Times

“Cisneros is a writer for all people. This is a novel of families, home life and finding yourself in the world’s greater landscape.” –USA Today

“A sprawling, exuberant hopscotch through a century of family history. . . . Cisneros seduces us with her knitted tales, great and small, and her message is all the more powerful for its shimmering clarity.” –Time Out New York

“Cisneros has a great eye for detail, a good ear for dialogue and a marvelous sense of humor. . . Caramelo is a tour de force–rich in its use of language, breathtaking in scope.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Lovingly, passionately woven from dust and glory. . . A sweeping family history that somehow manages to interlace not just the Reyeses -- those conjurers, enticers and troublemakers -- but also all the rest of us, the good and bad together, the bitter and, of course, the sweet.” –Miami Herald

“Sprawling, spirited. . . Vibrant and big-hearted.” –Elle

“Cisneros’s exuberant prose tickles the senses. . . A warm and generous story to wrap yourself up in.” –St. Petersburg Times

“A sweet gift from the universe, a reminder of the ancient, deep, noble, and sad sources of the human heart. . . sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes transcendent.” –San Antonio Express

“Cisneros is a virtuoso. . . [Caramelo] is rich in character and action, people and passions.” –Houston Chronicle

“Remarkable. . . . Caramelo is a book to read slowly and savor and if you can find a listener, to read out loud.” –Santa Fe New Mexican

“Cisneros is such an imaginative storyteller. . . Caramelo engages in a kind of playfulness that is utterly bewitching.” –Entertainment Weekly

“Spellbinding. . . A richly satisfying novel.” –People

“There should be a brand-new language to describe the ways in which [Cisneros] has imbued the ancient art of story-telling with her trademark organization, characterization, evocation of time and place, portrayal of a particular culture, and visionary wisdom. . .You must read this book for yourself, two or three times.” –The Women’s Review of Books

“Cisneros is a wonderful cultural translator, writing English dialogue so saturated with Mexican-Spanish idioms and constructions that you feel like you’ve been magically empowered to eavesdrop in another language.” –The Oregonian


Review
"All the energy of a riotous family fiesta. . . . Cisneros is undeniably at her peak.? ?The Washington Post

"A glorious book, Caramelo is crowded with the souvenirs and memories of the dramas of everyday life?like an oversized family album, intimate as well as universal."?The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A joyful, fizzy American novel. . . Soulful, sophisticated and skeptical, full of great one-liners, it is one of those novels that blithely leap across the border between literary and popular fiction.? ?New York Times Book Review

"Like Eduardo Galeano, John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, Cisneros writes along the borders where the novel and social history intersect. In this lovingly told and poetic novel, she uses the storytelling art to give the voiceless ones a voice, and to find the border to the past, imbuing the struggles of her family and her countries with the richness of myth.? ?Los Angeles Times

?A wonderful book . . . evoking life?s absurdity and possibility, tragedy and transcendence. . . . Combines the thematic richness of the most ambitious literature with the delight in character and plot of the most engrossing page-turner.? ?Chicago Sun-Times

?Cisneros is a writer for all people. This is a novel of families, home life and finding yourself in the world?s greater landscape.? ?USA Today

?A sprawling, exuberant hopscotch through a century of family history. . . . Cisneros seduces us with her knitted tales, great and small, and her message is all the more powerful for its shimmering clarity.? ?Time Out New York

?Cisneros has a great eye for detail, a good ear for dialogue and a marvelous sense of humor. . . Caramelo is a tour de force?rich in its use of language, breathtaking in scope.? ?St. Louis Post-Dispatch

?Lovingly, passionately woven from dust and glory. . . A sweeping family history that somehow manages to interlace not just the Reyeses -- those conjurers, enticers and troublemakers -- but also all the rest of us, the good and bad together, the bitter and, of course, the sweet.? ?Miami Herald

?Sprawling, spirited. . . Vibrant and big-hearted.? ?Elle

?Cisneros?s exuberant prose tickles the senses. . . A warm and generous story to wrap yourself up in.? ?St. Petersburg Times

?A sweet gift from the universe, a reminder of the ancient, deep, noble, and sad sources of the human heart. . . sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes transcendent.? ?San Antonio Express

?Cisneros is a virtuoso. . . [Caramelo] is rich in character and action, people and passions.? ?Houston Chronicle

?Remarkable. . . . Caramelo is a book to read slowly and savor and if you can find a listener, to read out loud.? ?Santa Fe New Mexican

?Cisneros is such an imaginative storyteller. . . Caramelo engages in a kind of playfulness that is utterly bewitching.? ?Entertainment Weekly

?Spellbinding. . . A richly satisfying novel.? ?People

?There should be a brand-new language to describe the ways in which [Cisneros] has imbued the ancient art of story-telling with her trademark organization, characterization, evocation of time and place, portrayal of a particular culture, and visionary wisdom. . .You must read this book for yourself, two or three times.? ?The Women?s Review of Books

?Cisneros is a wonderful cultural translator, writing English dialogue so saturated with Mexican-Spanish idioms and constructions that you feel like you?ve been magically empowered to eavesdrop in another language.? ?The Oregonian


Book Description
Every year, Ceyala "Lala" Reyes' family--aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, and Lala's six older brothers--packs up three cars and, in a wild ride, drive from Chicago to the Little Grandfather and Awful Grandmother's house in Mexico City for the summer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothers and to understand her place on this side of the border and that, Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she starts telling the Awful Grandmother's life story, seeking clues to how she got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating. Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwind exploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished rebozo, or shawl, that has been passed down through generations of Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history, family, and love.

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

From the Inside Flap
Every year, Ceyala "Lala" Reyes' family--aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, and Lala's six older brothers--packs up three cars and, in a wild ride, drive from Chicago to the Little Grandfather and Awful Grandmother's house in Mexico City for the summer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothers and to understand her place on this side of the border and that, Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she starts telling the Awful Grandmother's life story, seeking clues to how she got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating. Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwind exploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished rebozo, or shawl, that has been passed down through generations of Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history, family, and love.

From the Back Cover
"All the energy of a riotous family fiesta. . . . Cisneros is undeniably at her peak.” –The Washington Post

"A glorious book, Caramelo is crowded with the souvenirs and memories of the dramas of everyday life…like an oversized family album, intimate as well as universal."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A joyful, fizzy American novel. . . Soulful, sophisticated and skeptical, full of great one-liners, it is one of those novels that blithely leap across the border between literary and popular fiction.” –New York Times Book Review

"Like Eduardo Galeano, John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, Cisneros writes along the borders where the novel and social history intersect. In this lovingly told and poetic novel, she uses the storytelling art to give the voiceless ones a voice, and to find the border to the past, imbuing the struggles of her family and her countries with the richness of myth.” –Los Angeles Times

“A wonderful book . . . evoking life’s absurdity and possibility, tragedy and transcendence. . . . Combines the thematic richness of the most ambitious literature with the delight in character and plot of the most engrossing page-turner.” –Chicago Sun-Times

“Cisneros is a writer for all people. This is a novel of families, home life and finding yourself in the world’s greater landscape.” –USA Today

“A sprawling, exuberant hopscotch through a century of family history. . . . Cisneros seduces us with her knitted tales, great and small, and her message is all the more powerful for its shimmering clarity.” –Time Out New York

“Cisneros has a great eye for detail, a good ear for dialogue and a marvelous sense of humor. . . Caramelo is a tour de force–rich in its use of language, breathtaking in scope.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Lovingly, passionately woven from dust and glory. . . A sweeping family history that somehow manages to interlace not just the Reyeses -- those conjurers, enticers and troublemakers -- but also all the rest of us, the good and bad together, the bitter and, of course, the sweet.” –Miami Herald

“Sprawling, spirited. . . Vibrant and big-hearted.” –Elle

“Cisneros’s exuberant prose tickles the senses. . . A warm and generous story to wrap yourself up in.” –St. Petersburg Times

“A sweet gift from the universe, a reminder of the ancient, deep, noble, and sad sources of the human heart. . . sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes transcendent.” –San Antonio Express

“Cisneros is a virtuoso. . . [Caramelo] is rich in character and action, people and passions.” –Houston Chronicle

“Remarkable. . . . Caramelo is a book to read slowly and savor and if you can find a listener, to read out loud.” –Santa Fe New Mexican

“Cisneros is such an imaginative storyteller. . . Caramelo engages in a kind of playfulness that is utterly bewitching.” –Entertainment Weekly

“Spellbinding. . . A richly satisfying novel.” –People

“There should be a brand-new language to describe the ways in which [Cisneros] has imbued the ancient art of story-telling with her trademark organization, characterization, evocation of time and place, portrayal of a particular culture, and visionary wisdom. . .You must read this book for yourself, two or three times.” –The Women’s Review of Books

“Cisneros is a wonderful cultural translator, writing English dialogue so saturated with Mexican-Spanish idioms and constructions that you feel like you’ve been magically empowered to eavesdrop in another language.” –The Oregonian


About the Author
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 Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of the novels The House on Mango Street and Caramelo, a collection of short stories Woman Hollering Creek, a book of poetry Loose Woman, and a children's book Hairs/Pelitos. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One

Acuérdate de Acapulco,

de aquellas noches,

María bonita, María del alma;

acuérdate que en la playa,

con tus manitas las estrellitas

las enjuagabas.

-"María bonita," by Augustín Lara, version sung by the composer while playing the piano, accompanied by a sweet, but very, very sweet violin

**************

We're all little in the photograph above Father's bed. We were little in Acapulco. We will always be little. For him we are just as we were then.

Here are the Acapulco waters lapping just behind us, and here we are sitting on the lip of land and water. The little kids, Lolo and Memo, making devil horns behind each other's heads; the Awful Grandmother holding them even though she never held them in real life. Mother seated as far from her as politely possible; Toto slouched beside her. The big boys, Rafa, Ito, and Tikis, stand under the roof of Father's skinny arms. Aunty Light-Skin hugging Antonieta Araceli to her belly. Aunty shutting her eyes when the shutter clicks, as if she chooses not to remember the future, the house on Destiny Street sold, the move north to Monterrey.

Here is Father squinting that same squint I always make when I'm photographed. He isn't acabado yet. He isn't finished, worn from working, from worrying, from smoking too many packs of cigarettes. There isn't anything on his face but his face, and a tidy, thin mustache, like Pedro Infante, like Clark Gable. Father's skin pulpy and soft, pale as the belly side of a shark.

The Awful Grandmother has the same light skin as Father, but in elephant folds, stuffed into a bathing suit the color of an old umbrella with an amber handle.

I'm not here. They've forgotten about me when the photographer walking along the beach proposes a portrait, un recuerdo, a remembrance literally. No one notices I'm off by myself building sand houses. They won't realize I'm missing until the photographer delivers the portrait to Catita's house, and I look at it for the first time and ask, -When was this taken? Where?

Then everyone realizes the portrait is incomplete. It's as if I didn't exist. It's as if I'm the photographer walking along the beach with the tripod camera on my shoulder asking, -¿Un recuerdo? A souvenir? A memory?

1.

Verde, Blanco, y Colorado

Uncle Fat-Face's brand-new used white Cadillac, Uncle Baby's green Impala, Father's red Chevrolet station wagon bought that summer on credit are racing to the Little Grandfather's and Awful Grandmother's house in Mexico City. Chicago, Route 66-Ogden Avenue past the giant Turtle Wax turtle-all the way to Saint Louis, Missouri, which Father calls by its Spanish name, San Luis. San Luis to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Dallas. Dallas to San Antonio to Laredo on 81 till we are on the other side. Monterrey. Saltillo. Matehuala. San Luis Potosí. Querétaro. Mexico City.

Every time Uncle Fat-Face's white Cadillac passes our red station wagon, the cousins-Elvis, Aristotle, and Byron-stick their tongues out at us and wave.

-Hurry, we tell Father. -Go faster!

When we pass the green Impala, Amor and Paz tug Uncle Baby's shoulder. -Daddy, please!

My brothers and I send them raspberries, we wag our tongues and make faces, we spit and point and laugh. The three cars-green Impala, white Cadillac, red station wagon-racing, passing each other sometimes on the shoulder of the road. Wives yelling, -Slower! Children

yelling, -Faster!

What a disgrace when one of us gets carsick and we have to stop the car. The green Impala, the white Caddy whooshing past noisy and happy as a thousand flags. Uncle Fat-Face toot-tooting that horn like crazy.

2.

Chillante

If we make it to Toluca, I'm walking to church on my knees.

Aunty Licha, Elvis, Aristotle, and Byron are hauling things out to the curb. Blenders. Transistor radios. Barbie dolls. Swiss Army Knives. Plastic crystal chandeliers. Model airplanes. Men's button-down dress shirts. Lace push-up bras. Socks. Cut-glass necklaces with matching earrings. Hair clippers. Mirror sunglasses. Panty girdles. Ballpoint pens. Eye shadow kits. Scissors. Toasters. Acrylic pullovers. Satin quilted bedspreads. Towel sets. All this besides the boxes of used clothing.

Outside, roaring like the ocean, Chicago traffic from the Northwest and Congress Expressways. Inside, another roar; in Spanish from the kitchen radio, in English from TV cartoons, and in a mix of the two from her boys begging for, -Un nikle for Italian lemonade. But Aunty Licha doesn't hear anything. Under her breath Aunty is bargaining,

-Virgen Purísima, if we even make it to Laredo, even that, I'll say three rosaries . . .

-Cállate, vieja, you make me nervous. Uncle Fat-Face is fiddling with the luggage rack on top of the roof. It has taken him two days to get everything to fit inside the car. The white Cadillac's trunk is filled to capacity. The tires sag. The back half of the car dips down low. There isn't room for anything else except the passengers, and even so, the cousins have to sit on top of suitcases.

-Daddy, my legs hurt already.

-You. Shut your snout or you ride in the trunk.

-But there isn't any room in the trunk.

-I said shut your snout!

To pay for the vacation, Uncle Fat-Face and Aunty Licha always bring along items to sell. After visiting the Little Grandfather and Awful Grandmother in the city, they take a side trip to Aunty Licha's hometown of Toluca. All year their apartment looks like a store. A year's worth of weekends spent at Maxwell Street flea market* collecting merchandise for the trip south. Uncle says what sells is lo chillante, literally the screaming. -The gaudier the better, says the Awful Grandmother. -No use taking anything of value to that town of Indians.

Each summer it's something unbelievable that sells like hot queques. Topo Gigio key rings. Eyelash curlers. Wind Song perfume sets. Plastic rain bonnets. This year Uncle is betting on glow-in-the-dark yo-yos.

Boxes. On top of the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator, along the hallway walls, behind the three-piece sectional couch, from floor to ceiling, on top or under things. Even the bathroom has a special storage shelf high above so no one can touch.

In the boys' room, floating near the ceiling just out of reach, toys nailed to the walls with upholstery tacks. Tonka trucks, model airplanes, Erector sets still in their original cardboard boxes with the cellophane window. They're not to play with, they're to look at. -This one I got last Christmas, and that one was a present for my seventh birthday . . .

Like displays at a museum.

We've been waiting all morning for Uncle Fat-Face to telephone and say, -Quihubo, brother, vámonos, so that Father can call Uncle Baby and say the same thing. Every year the three Reyes sons and their families drive south to the Awful Grandmother's house on Destiny Street, Mexico City, one family at the beginning of the summer, one in the middle, and one at the summer's end.

-But what if something happens? the Awful Grandmother asks her husband.

-Why ask me, I'm already dead, the Little Grandfather says, retreating to his bedroom with his newspaper and his cigar. -You'll do what you want to do, same as always.

-What if someone falls asleep at the wheel like the time Concha Chacón became a widow and lost half her family near Dallas. What a barbarity! And did you hear that sad story about Blanca's cousins, eight people killed just as they were returning from Michoacán, right outside the Chicago city limits, a patch of ice and a light pole in some place called Aurora, pobrecitos. Or what about that station wagon full of gringa nuns that fell off the mountainside near Saltillo. But that was the old highway through the Sierra Madre before they built the new interstate.

All the same, we are too familiar with the roadside crosses and the stories they stand for. The Awful Grandmother complains so much, her sons finally give in. That's why this year Uncle Fat-Face, Uncle Baby, and Father-el Tarzán-finally agree to drive down together, although they never agree on anything.

-If you ask me, the whole idea stinks, Mother says, mopping the kitchen linoleum. She shouts from the kitchen to the bathroom, where Father is trimming his mustache over the sink.

-Zoila, why do you insist on being so stubborn? Father shouts into the mirror clouding the glass. -Ya verás. You'll see, vieja, it'll be fun.

-And stop calling me vieja, Mother shouts back. -I hate that word! I'm not old, your mother's old.

We're going to spend the entire summer in Mexico. We won't leave until school ends, and we won't come back until after it's started. Father, Uncle Fat-Face, and Uncle Baby don't have to report to the L. L. Fish Furniture Company on South Ashland until September.

-Because we're such good workers our boss gave us the whole summer off, imagine that.

But that's nothing but story. The three Reyes brothers have quit their jobs. When they don't like a job, they quit. They pick up their hammers and say, -Hell you . . . Get outta . . . Full of sheet. They are craftsmen. They don't use a staple gun and cardboard like the upholsterers in the U.S. They make sofas and chairs by hand. Quality work. And when they don't like their boss, they pick up their hammers and their time cards and walk out cursing in two languages, with tacks in the soles of their shoes and lint in their beard stubble and hair, and bits of string dangling from the hem of their sweaters.

But they didn't quit this time, did they? No, no. The real story is this. The bosses at the L. L. Fish Furniture Company on South Ashland have begun to dock the three because they arrive sixteen minutes after the hour, forty-three minutes, fifty-two, instead of on time. According to Uncle Fat-Face, -We are on time. It depends on which time you are on, Western time or the calendar of the sun. The L. L. Fish Furniture Company on South Ashland Avenue has decided they don't have time for the brothers Reyes anymore. -Go hell . . . What's a matter . . . Same to you mother!

It's the Awful Grandmother's idea that her mijos drive down to Mexico together. But years afterward everyone will forget and blame each other.

*The original Maxwell Street, a Chicago flea market for more than 120 years, spread itself around the intersections of Maxwell and Halsted Streets. It was a filthy, pungent, wonderful place filled with astonishing people, good music, and goods from don't-ask-where. Devoured by the growth of the University of Illinois, it was relocated, though the new Maxwell Street market is no longer on Maxwell Street and exists as a shadow of its former grime and glory. Only Jim's Original Hot Dogs, founded in 1939, stands where it always has, a memorial to Maxwell Street's funky past.

3.

Qué Elegante

Pouring out from the windows, "Por un amor" from the hi-fi, the version by Lola Beltrán, that queen of Mexican country, with tears in the throat and

a group of mariachis cooing, -But don't cry, Lolita, and Lola replying,

-I'm not crying, it's just . . . that I remember.

A wooden house that looks like an elephant sat on the roof. An apartment so close to the ground people knock on the window instead of the door. Just off Taylor Street. Not far from Saint Francis church of the Mexicans. A stone's throw from Maxwell Street flea market. The old Italian section of Chicago in the shadow of the downtown Loop. This is where Uncle Fat-Face, Aunty Licha, Elvis, Aristotle, and Byron live, on a block where everyone knows Uncle Fat-Face by his Italian nickname, Rico, instead of Fat-Face or Federico, even though "rico" means "rich" in Spanish, and Uncle is always complaining he is pobre, pobre. -It is no disgrace to be poor, Uncle says, citing the Mexican saying, -but it's very inconvenient.

-What have I got to show for my life? Uncle thinks. -Beautiful women I've had. Lots. And beautiful cars.

Every year Uncle trades his old Cadillac for a brand-new used

one. On the 16th of September, Uncle waits until the tail of the Mexican parade. When the last float is rolling toward the Loop, Uncle tags

along in his big Caddy, thrilled to be driving down State Street, the

top rolled down, the kids sitting in the back dressed in charro suits and

waving.

And as for beautiful women, Aunty Licha must be afraid he is thinking of trading her, too, and sending her back to Mexico, even though

she is as beautiful as a Mexican Elizabeth Taylor. Aunty is jealous of every woman, old or young, who comes near Uncle Fat-Face, though Uncle is almost bald and as small and brown as a peanut. Mother says, -If a woman's crazy jealous like Licha you can bet it's because someone's giving her reason to be, know what I mean? It's that she's from over there, Mother continues, meaning from the Mexican side, and not this side. -Mexican women are just like the Mexican songs, locas for love.

Once Aunty almost tried to kill herself because of Uncle Fat-Face. -My own husband! What a barbarity! A prostitute's disease from my own husband. Imagine! Ay, get him out of here! I don't ever want to see you again. ¡Lárgate! You disgust me, me das asco, you cochino! You're not fit to be the father of my children. I'm going to kill myself! Kill myself!!! Which sounds much more dramatic in Spanish. -¡Me mato! ¡¡¡Me maaaaaaaatoooooo!!! The big kitchen knife, the one Aunty dips in a glass of water to cut the boys' birthday cakes, pointed toward her own sad heart.

Too terrible to watch. Elvis, Aristotle, and Byron had to run for the neighbors, but by the time the neighbors arrived it was too late. Uncle Fat-Face sobbing, collapsed in a heap on the floor like a broken lawn chair, Aunty Licha cradling him like the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus after he was brought down from the cross, hugging that hiccuping head to her chest, murmuring in his ear over and over, -Ya, ya. Ya pasó. It's all over. There, there, there.

When Aunty's not angry she calls Uncle payaso, clown. -Don't be a payaso, she scolds gently, laughing at Uncle's silly stories, combing the few strands of hair left on his head with her fingers. But this only encourages Uncle to be even more of a payaso.

-So I said to the boss, I quit. This job is like el calzón de una puta. A prostitute's underwear. You heard me! All day long it's nothing but up and down, up and down, up and down . . .


From the Hardcover edition.

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