Bologna Tacos and Kitchen Slaves: Food and Identity in Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo

Abstract

Caramelo (2002) chronicles the experiences of Celaya Reyes, the novel’s narrator and main character. This fictional biography begins with Celaya’s recollection of a summer in Mexico when she is five years old. This first section depicts food through a child’s perception of an almost magical Mexico where even the churches are “the color of flan” (17), where parrots in their cages are “all the rainbow colors of Lulú sodas” (17), and where “the stars open white and soft like fresh bolillo bread” (18). The novel then jumps backward in time to the biography of Celaya’s paternal grandmother, Soledad (“The Awful Grandmother”), and returns in the end to Celaya as a teenager. Through circular time and across physical and psychological boundaries, the novel takes place in three main settings: Chicago, Mexico, and San Antonio, through various time periods spanning from the Mexican Revolution to the 1970s. This physical and psychological movement represents a discovery and transformation of individual identity.