"The pleas of the desperate": Collective agency versus magical realism in Ana Castillo's So Far from God

Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 81-103

  Caminero Santangelo, Marta ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS   (United States)

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EID: 60949569696     PISSN: 07327730     EISSN: 19361645     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Ana Castillo, So Far From God (New York: Plume Penguin, 1994). Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
2. See, for example, Theresa Delgadillo, "Forms of Chicana Feminist Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana Castillo's So Far From God," Modern Fiction Studies, 44, No. 4 (1998), 888-916; subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text;
3. Kamala Platt, "Ecocritical Chicana Literature: Ana Castillo's 'Virtual Realism,'" in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, ed. Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), pp. 139-57;
4. Ralph E. Rodriguez, "Chicana/o Fiction from Resistance to Contestation: The Role of Creation in Ana Castillo's So Far From God," MELUS, 25, No. 2 (2000), 63-82.
5. See Lisa Sandlin, "La Loca Lives: A Novel in Which a Three-Year-Old Girl Dies and Then Has a Sudden Change of Heart," rev. of So Far From God, by Castillo, New York Times Book Review, 3 October 1993, pp. 22-23;
6. Barbara Kingsolver, "Lush Language: Desert Heat," rev. of So Far From God, by Castillo, Los Angeles Times Book Review, 16 May 1993, pp. 1, 9;
7. James Polk, "Battling with Magic," rev. of So Far From God, by Castillo, Washington Post, 31 May 1993, p. D6;
8. Michael Porsche, "So Far From God: Ana Castillo's Telenovelistic Xicanista Reassessment of the Paulinian Triad," in U.S. Latino Literatures and Cultures: Transnational Perspectives, ed. Francisco A. Lomelí and Karin Ikas (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitatsverlag, 2000), pp. 181-90;
9. Markus Heide, "The Postmodern 'We': Academia and Community in Ana Castillo's So Far From God and Denise Chávez' Face of an Angel," in U.S. Latino Literatures and Cultures, pp. 171-80; subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text;
10. Roland Walter, "The Cultural Politics of Dislocation and Relocation in the Novels of Ana Castillo," MELUS, 23, No. 1 (1998), 81-97; subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text;
11. B. J. Manriquez, "Ana Castillo's So Far From God: Intimations of the Absurd," College Literature, 29, No. 2 (2002), 37-49;
12. Wendy B. Faris, "Scheherazade's Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction," in Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Faris (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 163-90; subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text;
13. and Karen Christian, Show and Tell: Identity As Performance in U.S. Latina/o Fiction (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997); subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. Christian notes the tendency of critics to read all U.S. Latino/a writers through the lens of Gabriel García Márquez, whether it legitimately applies or not (p. 122). I would argue that, surprisingly, Christian herself falls into the same trap when she later compares Esmeralda Santiago's childhood memoir When I Was Puerto Rican to García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude; in both, she asserts, "invasions of 'progress' are surrounded by the same aura of irreality" (p. 126). This connection seems like quite a reach, however, since Santiago's autobiographical text is the furthest thing imaginable from magical realism.
14. Gail Pérez, for example, places So Far From God within "a long tradition of voicing struggle and oppositional consciousness in the language of miracle and popular religion" (p. 54), which she associates with "magic" (p. 60): see her, "Ana Castillo as Santera: Reconstructing Popular Religious Praxis," in A Reader in Latina Feminist Theology: Religion and Justice, ed. Maria Pilar Aquino, Daisy L. Machado, and Jeanette Rodriguez (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), pp. 53-79. In "The Postmodern 'We': Academia and Community in Ana Castillo's So Far From God and Denise Chávez' Face of an Angel," Heide observes that, in So Far From God, the "narrative strategies generally associated with Latin American and Chicano/a magical realism . . . are interwoven into depictions of political conflicts in rural New Mexico" (p. 173); and in "Ecocritical Chicana Literature: Ana Castillo's 'Virtual Realism,'" Platt notes that an "examination of spirituality and miracles . . . [is] brought into conjunction with social justice and material everyday existence" in the novel (p. 146). Piatt, however, resists giving Castillo's miraculous depictions the "magical realist" label.
15. Consider, for example, little Clara's "magical" powers of clairvoyance and telekinesis in Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, trans. Magda Bogin (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), which are described as follows: "Until that day they had never given a name to the eccentricities of their youngest daughter, nor had it ever crossed their minds to ascribe them to satanic influence. Clara's strangeness was simply an atttibute of their youngest daughter, like Luis's limp or Rosa's beauty. The child's mental powers bothered no one and produced no great disorder . . ." (p. 7).
16. Similarly, in García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, trans. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Avon Books, 1971), magical flying carpets provide entertainment and amusement for young children but provoke astonishment and disbelief from no one (p. 38); the appearance of the ghost of a murdered man elicits the murderer's anger at his return, followed by guilt - but not shock, fear, or wonder (p. 30).
17. In Louise Erdrich's Tracks (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), the elder Nanapush's ability to guide Eli's hunt of a moose psychically is reported without commentary on its wondrous nature (pp. 101-04); but the characters regard a map that details their loss of land as unfathomable and inconceivable (pp. 173-74). The characters' lack of amazement at the fantastic occurrences in a magical-realist text serves as a stark contrast that sets into relief the actual sources of astonishment, horror, and disbelief - sources often grounded in real-life social, economic, and historical circumstances. (Note that I include non-Latin American examples of magical realism in my discussion in order to move away from the sort of critical essentialism I discuss in this paper, which finds the only or primary examples of magical realism in Latin American and Latina/o texts.)
18. See Castillo, interview with Kate Miller and Sean Patrick Walsh, "So Far, So Good: Ana Castillo, Novelist, Essayist, Poet, Painter," io, 1, No. 2 (1994), 24-27: "The women in So Far From God are modeled on the martyrs in the history of the Catholic Church. We are made to believe in these miracles. . . . it's not magical fiction; it is faith" (p. 27; emphasis added).
19. Castillo, interview with Elsa Saeta, "A MELUS Interview: Ana Castillo," MELUS, 22, No. 3 (1997), 135.
20. Delia Poey, Latino American Literature in the Classroom: The Politics of Transformation (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 28-29. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
21. In "A New Chapter," Hispanic, September 1992, pp. 30-38, Martha Frase-Blunt similarly observes that "the term 'magic realism' seems to have become a catch-all in the literary world to describe a 'Latin American' style of fiction in which real action is tinged with dreamlike surrealism. . . . critics are inclined to use a broad brush to apply the term to any contemporary U. S. Hispanic writer who delves into the emotional side of life" (p. 32). As Christian notes, "The result is the unjustified and ultimately damaging homogenization of works containing a miracle or two" (p. 147). Yet it seems to me that Christian ironically repeats this pattern where Castillo is concerned.
22. For an excellent discussion of primitivism and its effect on African American cultural production, specifically with regard to Langston Hughes in the 1920s, see David Chinitz, "Rejuvenation Through Joy: Langston Hughes, Primitivism and Jazz," American Literary History, 9, No. 1 (1997), 60-78.
23. Ellen McCracken, New Latina Narrative: The Feminine Space of Postmodern Ethnicity (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999), p. 5. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
24. Consider, for example, author Francisco Goldman's comment (as reported in Frase-Blunt, "A New Chapter," p. 32) regarding publishers of U.S. Latino/a novels such as his own The Long Night of White Chickens: "They will paste the words 'García Márquez' onto every single book jacket - they even did it to me. I kept telling them 'I don't do magic realism.'"
25. It is worth noting that Faris, among others, has made a strong case for the politically committed nature of magical realist fiction itself. Nevertheless, as Poey notes in Latino American Literature in the Classroom, some critics have argued that the Latin American Boom's magical realist novels "demonstrated the abandonment in Latin America of the 'novela comprometida' or politically committed novel, and the emergence of the 'novela metafísica' or metaphysical novel" (p. 33); Poey cites Donald L. Shaw, "Concerning the Interpretation of Cien An̄os de Soledad," Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv, 3 (1977), 322. This perception of magical realism as less than politically committed may possibly drive its parody in Castillo's very political novel.
26. Jeana DelRosso, "The Convent as Colonist: Catholicism in the Works of Contemporary Women Writers of the Americas," MELUS, 26, No. 3 (2001), 193-94.
27. DelRosso is drawing upon the arguments of Mary Daly in Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), p. 30. DelRosso's article, on the role of the Catholic Church in selected texts by Latina/Latin American women, does not specifically mention So Far From God.
28. Roger Haight, An Alternative Vision: An Interpretation of Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 67. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
29. Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology, trans. Paul Burns (New York: Orbis Books, 1987), p. 4. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
30. Boff and Boff, Salvation and Liberation: In Search of a Balance Between Faith and Politics, trans. Robert R. Barr (New York: Orbis Books, 1984), pp. 3-4. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
31. Even if the "saints" were depicted in the novel as actually helping the people of Tome, such help, when viewed through the lens of liberation theology, might still be read as depriving the community of its agency to help itself. As Boff and Boff explain in Introducing Liberation Theology, "Aid increases the dependence of the poor, tying them to help from others . . ., not enabling them to become their own liberators" (pp. 4-5).
32. Castillo, "La Macha: Toward a Beautiful Whole Self," in Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, ed. Carla Trujillo (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1991), p. 33.
33. In "Ana Castillo as Santera," Pérez insists that we can "view popular miracles" in the novel "not merely as the opium of the people" but as a form of what, quoting Norma Alarcón, she terms "effective political interventions" (p. 67); see also Alarcón, "Chicana Feminism: In the Tracks of the Native Woman," Cultural Studies, 4, No. 3 (1990), 254.
34. Pérez illustrates with an example - drawn from Annette Fuentes and Barbara Ehrenreich, Women in the Global Factory (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp. 28-30 - in which, in Malaysia, the sighting of an evil spirit by a worker in a factory may shut the factory down for several days. My question is, however, whether popular miracles are portrayed this way by Castillo; it is remarkable that the prominent instances of "popular miracles" I have cited in the novel are insistently represented in terms of their lack of productive intersection with the socioeconomic circumstances of the people of Tome.
35. Mayumi Toyosato, "Grounding Self and Action: Land, Community, and Survival in I, Rigoberta Menchú, No Telephone to Heaven, and So Far From God," Hispanic Journal, 19, No. 1 (Spring 1997), 295, 305-06. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
36. Lawrence Buell, "The Ecocritical Insurgency," New Literary History, 30, No. 3 (1999), 701-02. These assumptions may be found within the body of "ecocritical" scholarship more generally and are not just limited to commentary on the environment in Castillo's novel.
37. Tanya Hellein, "Simply a Question of Belief," rev. of So Far From God, by Castillo, Times Literary Supplement, No. 4774, 30 September 1994, p. 25.