Anderson Lillie December 1, 2006 ENG 245, Vzquez The Figure of Home Of all of the novels read in class this term, family, or the idea of home, has been a key aspect to each books plot and theme. In most of the novels the characters had to deal with the removal of themselves from their original home to a new home, or attempting to place them into a new home. The characters find themselves existing in a space between their two homes, not being accepted in their new home and not being able to go back to their former home. Judith Ortiz Cofer's novel The Line of the Sun and Sandra Cisneros' Caramelo both address the idea of existing between two homes. The Line of the Sun depicts two generations reactions to leaving their home in Puerto Rico and moving to the United States. In Caramelo the narrator of the story finds herself not accepted into American society, although that is here birth nation, and is only at ease when she visits Mexico. In Cofer's The Line of the Sun there are many characters that represent the positive and negative feeling towards living in a country that is not yours. The wife and young daughter of Rafael move to the United States from Puerto Rico and settle in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, called "el building", in New Jersey. The father, Rafael, has assimilated well to American society and dislikes the Puerto Rican neighborhood, but cannot afford a different home at the time. The mother, Ramona, however longs for Puerto Rico and seeks refugee in the familiarities of "el building", the Puerto Rican apartment complex. The family lives in a limbo land between their former home in Puerto Rico and their home in America. The mother does not accept America as her
home she thinks of her home in America as "a place that threatened to imprison her" (Line of Sun, 285). The mother's entire life in America is made of her dreaming of "going back in style to her homeland" (Line of Sun, 285). She refuses to assimilate to American society, thus ostracizing herself from many parts of her family, especially her children's lives. The children, however, are caught between American society, which they encounter usually only when at school, and the Puerto Rican society that evolves from El Building. Neither of the children lived in Puerto Rico for enough time to become a part of the Puerto Rican culture and have instead been integrated into American society. However, American society will not accept them because they are Latino and the social order of El Building does not accept them due to being to American. The integration into American society also disrupts the traditional Puerto Rican structure of the family. The mother act cannot as much of an authority figure as she normally would because of her lack of understanding of the English language and American customs. When the father is not around the daughter, Marisol, becomes the head authority figure when dealing with the world outside of El Building. The children are more accepting of their American lives than of their lives involving their heritage. The opposite situation occurs in Sandra Cisneros novel Caramelo. The main character, Ceyala, a Mexican-American finds herself more accepted in her country of ancestry, Mexico, but not her country of birth, America. As a child she is somewhat hesitant to Mexico at first, but she quickly adjusts to the different culture "Every year when I cross the boarder it's the same- my mind forgets. But my body always remembers" (Caramelo, 18). She is happy and comfortable when she is in Mexico, but
when she returns to America she begins to become depressed. As she becomes older her depression and dislike for America become more and more predominate. Ceyala tries to connect herself with people whom she believes to represent Mexico. She forms a friend ship with Viva, one of the few other Mexican girls at her school, even though the friend puts her in compromising positions and does not put the same effort that Celaya puts into the friendship. When in Mexico Ceyala befriends Candelaria, whom it is revealed is actually Ceyala's half sister, because of the beautiful skin Ceyala believes she has. The telling of her awful grandmother's story is how Ceyala relates to Mexico in the strongest way. She uses the experiences of her grandmother to help form her idea of what Mexico is. The two novels The Line of the Sun and Caramelo each represent different experiences by Latinos in America. The characters in each novel lived in both their native lands and the lands of their heritages, however, they experienced different cultures of the American society and affiliate themselves with opposite homes. In The Line of the Sun the children, who experience a hybrid of Puerto Rican-American culture and white American culture recognize themselves with the white American society, although they only exists on the out skirts of that culture. Where as in Caramelo the character is more widely accepted into American culture and society, but rejects it in favor of the culture of her heritage.
Bibliography Oritz Cofer, Judith. The Line of the Sun. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1989 Cisneros, Sandra. Caramelo. New York: Random House Inc., 2002
Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993. Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands: La Frontera. San Francisco, CA: Spinsters, 1987.