it’s obvious that Santos is a poet. his use of repetition (“have all the Santos died?”), his precision, & timing make all the stories within this memoir intriguing & engaging. what i loved most about this book is the seamlessness between Santos’ family history & the story of his life. his craft is novel (no pun intended…or maybe it was!) in that he waits to introduce his own experiences only once he outlines the significance of his relatives’. his presence is unmistakable, as his voice is strong, pointed, & eloquent, but he flits–very intentionally–between the roles of an omnipresent narrator & a deeply involved member of a family with a rich & complex history.
Santos’ use of Spanish language words, for me, seem to reveal some of his process of thinking/feeling. the moments he translates the words & the moments he doesn’t ultimately give me a sense of his emotional investment in telling his family’s story of being crossed by the border & having to juggle a new in-between space of both belonging & exile. the fluidity with which he introduces some Spanish words, translates them, & contextualizes their meaning suggests that his experience of biculturality (among other multiplicities) is integrated to the extent that he doesn’t see the different parts of himself as separate. nor does he see himself separate from any member of his family.
when Santos does translate, it didn’t make me feel stupid for not being totally fluent in Spanish. i felt that the flow was natural, beautiful, &, though it might be helpful for some to have a Spanish-English dictionary on hand, totally accessible. the fact that i do speak Spanish, though, gave me a sense of privileged understanding of this flow between languages, cultures, & past/present.
i found the mysticism & pre-colonial spiritualities (the repeated mention of Rosicrucian studies, for example) easy to identify with. the moment Santos describes his feet touching malachite floors, i was floored! simply knowing the healing power of malachite, the depth of its green shades that resemble the patterns found in wood, & the ornateness of a floor covered in such a powerful substance really pulled me into the story even further. i felt that my own complex views of god, ancestry, & familial love were deeply validated in this book.
because Santos was, for lack of a better term, emotionally available to me as a reader, i never felt that i was in the dark about the narrator’s intentions, feelings, & expectations of me. even & perhaps especially through Santos’ treatment of speaking in the third person about his relatives, he reveals himself as sensitive, intuitive, & wise. this writing is an awesome example of the kind of creative non-fiction a poet can aspire to.
your comments are interesting b/c your colleagues did not find him emotionally available (i did ) they kept waiting for a “character”.
some of the elements you mention are used here differently more better than in other books: dreams, spirituality etc. it’s something about his style and his transparancy (as you stated) that makes it work
e
transparency! that’s the ticket. thanks, elmaz.