Weaving Texts and Selves in Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo

Abstract

In the earliest reviews of Sandra Cisneros’s long awaited novel Caramelo (2002), critics highlighted the novel’s transnationalism as a feature that would add originality and would broaden the scope of Chican@ literature. Ellen McCracken saw the novel as a “nomadic text” that explores the intersection of hybridity and memory and the position of Chicanas as “exotic others” (McCracken, “Postmodern” 3). For Manuel Martín-Rodríguez, Caramelo’s transnationalism complicated the tension between history and fiction, what he called “f(r)icción histórica” (“Puro Cuento” 66). Two round trips inform the chronological plot: Chicago–Mexico City–Acapulco–Chicago, and Chicago–San Antonio–Chicago. The novel traces Lala’s family trips to Mexico to visit her grandparents, and the Reyes family’s changes of residence in the United States. For critics, transnationalism is in the itinerant quality of the Reyes family, and in their interaction with immigrants in the multicultural neighborhoods where they live. It is also in the assemblage and reassemblage of elements that belong to different cultures, mostly Mexican, Hispanic, and US popular culture, but not restricted to them.