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Sign up todayCaramelo
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Learn moreLala Reyes' grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala's possession. The novel opens with the Reyes' annual car trip—a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels—from Chicago to "the other side," Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family's stories, separating the truth from the "healthy lies" that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the "Paris of the New World" to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties—and finally, to Lala's own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas.
Caramelo is a vital, wise, romantic tale of homelands, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Vivid, funny, intimate, historical, it is a brilliant work destined to become a classic: a major new novel from one of our country's most beloved storytellers.
Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street, and her subsequent short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions, which Cisneros attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.
Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street, and her subsequent short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions, which Cisneros attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.
Reviews
“Spellbinding…A richly satisfying novel.”
“Cisneros is such an imaginative storyteller…Caramelo engages in a kind of playfulness that is utterly bewitching.”
“A joyful, fizzy American novel…Soulful, sophisticated and skeptical, full of great one-liners, it is one of those novels that blithely leap across the border between literary and popular fiction.”
“Cisneros is a writer for all people. This is a novel of families, home life and finding yourself in the world’s greater landscape.”
“All the energy of a riotous family fiesta…Cisneros is undeniably at her peak.”
“Like Eduardo Galeano, John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, Cisneros writes along the borders where the novel and social history intersect. In this lovingly told and poetic novel, she uses the storytelling art to give the voiceless ones a voice, and to find the border to the past, imbuing the struggles of her family and her countries with the richness of myth.”
“A wonderful book…evoking life’s absurdity and possibility, tragedy and transcendence…Combines the thematic richness of the most ambitious literature with the delight in character and plot of the most engrossing page-turner.”
“A glorious book, Caramelo is crowded with the souvenirs and memories of the dramas of everyday life…like an oversized family album, intimate as well as universal.”
“The world of the twentieth-century Mexican family, and of the Reyeses in particular, is as complicated, timeless, and satisfying as our own family stories.”
“The author’s gorgeous prose, on-a-dime turns of phrase, and sumptuous scene-setting make this an unforgettable read.”
“With the ability to make listeners laugh out loud with her humor, get lumps in their throats with her poignancy and leave them thinking about her characters long after they’ve hit the stop button, Cisneros is a master storyteller and performer…This is a treat of an audio, combining a fantastic narrative with an equally excellent reading.”
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