Picture of author.

Carmen Boullosa

Autor(a) de A Narco History

44+ Works 673 Membros 9 Críticas

About the Author

Image credit: Carmen Boullosa in 1996 [credit: Günter Prust]

Obras por Carmen Boullosa

A Narco History (2015) 104 exemplares
Before (1989) 81 exemplares
Texas: The Great Theft (2014) 76 exemplares
They're Cows, We're Pigs (1991) 53 exemplares
Leaving Tabasco (1999) 51 exemplares
Cleopatra Dismounts: A Novel (2002) 49 exemplares
Heavens on Earth (1997) 36 exemplares
The Book of Anna (2016) 33 exemplares
The Book of Eve (2020) 23 exemplares
The Miracle Worker (1993) 18 exemplares
La otra mano de Lepanto (2005) 13 exemplares
Texas (Spanish Edition) (2013) 12 exemplares
Llanto: Novelas Imposibles (1992) 7 exemplares
la virgen y el violin (2008) 5 exemplares
El Velázquez de París (2007) 5 exemplares
La Salvaja (1989) 4 exemplares
El complot de los románticos (2009) 4 exemplares
CORRO A MIRARME EN TI (2012) 2 exemplares
Cuando me volví mortal (2013) 1 exemplar
Taller Martín Pescador (1999) 1 exemplar
Prima (Italian Edition) (2012) 1 exemplar
Prosa Rota (2000) 1 exemplar
Paradores 1 exemplar

Associated Works

Forgotten Journey (1937) — Prefácio, algumas edições60 exemplares
Reversible Monuments (2002) — Contribuidor — 48 exemplares
How They See Us: Meditations on America (2010) — Contribuidor — 24 exemplares
Pathetic Literature (2022) — Contribuidor — 24 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Críticas

I look forward to figuring what to read next. This is (sorry, Daniel) a very entertaining, well-written, and enjoyable novel that took me quite some time to settle into. Boullosa starts with a small event and then nearly every page introduces a series of new characters and their reaction to the event. Twenty pages in, you are not likely to have seen the same character twice. Once I got used to her style and approach (meaning, I guess, once I relaxed), I found it a wonderful book. It takes place in south Texas, on the Mexican border. The subject, at least ostensibly, is the treatment of Mexicans by Americans. It’s honestly the first book I have read in quite some time that I wished were longer. I would have liked to know more about many of the people she introduced—not only their histories but their presents and their futures as well.… (mais)
½
 
Assinalado
Gypsy_Boy | 1 outra crítica | Aug 24, 2023 |
This is a feminist re-telling of the Book of Genesis. Told from Eve’s perspective, it challenges the Biblical patriarchal narrative.

According to Eve, she, not Adam, is the first human; Eden is not a paradise; the knowledge gained by her eating a fruit is essential, not damning; Abel, not Cain, is the villain; Noah never builds an ark; and the Tower of Babel is destroyed by an angry Earth. Eve’s story, however, is subverted by Adam. Jealous of Eve, he distorts the truth of creation and places himself at the centre and establishes a religion which sidelines Eve and all women.

Eve’s depiction of Eden is interesting. She describes it as bland and “a tepid emptiness, a void.” It is a place with “nothing good, nothing bad, no clothes, no scent, no taste, no words.” Leaving Eden allows her to realize the beauty of the world and to discover fire, gastronomy, pleasure, and words. Eve claims that “The apple was the key that set us free. It made us understand ourselves, making us who we were.” She states, “the unbitten apple that hung from the branch of the fruit tree would otherwise have rotted. I gave it meaning because I enjoyed it, and I gave us meaning, too: feelings, intuition, action, desire, pleasure.” Cain argues with his father that “’knowledge is a good thing, life is good, how can you say that what Eve has given us is bad?’”

Eve is a fully-developed character, though at times she seems almost saintly. She is the narrator so of course her flaws are not highlighted, though she does castigate herself for remaining silent: “I never should have held my tongue when I had things to say. Never.” It is reasonable to question how reliable a narrator she is: certainly there is a lack of nuance in the depiction of Adam. Because she experiences pleasure “so effortlessly and simply,” she believes Adam suffers from “clitoris envy. Males always have it, that unspoken, unexpressed envy of the clitoris.” In addition, “His belly always lacked what he needed to be able to give birth.” This jealousy, she asserts, is the foundation of his religiosity and his spiteful concocting of tales in which Eve is “’just the offshoot of a piece of [man], an afterthought, worthless.’” Since we are not privy to his thoughts and feelings, as we are to Eve’s, Adam’s violence and bizarre behaviour sometimes seem to come out of nowhere.

Just as Eve emphasizes that she is the mother of all, she suggests that Adam is responsible for all the mistreatment of women: “with his absurd stories Adam planted the seed, ignited the flame that made raping women a right, a necessity, a pleasure, and even a joy, and justified the murder of more than one – beautiful but nameless – only on account of their gender.” In the end, she states that “being male became equated with causing pain,” all because “They feared us because we could give life . . . they feared our red lips and our beauty, they feared their attraction to us and the boundless pleasure we experienced.” A litany of rules which women have to follow is presented: “We lost half of our names. We had no right to own property. Children were named after their fathers even though [women] were still responsible for looking after them. They used sharp stones to excise the clitoris . . . They made up all sorts of rules about good manners and bad manners. They imposed them on all our households. . . . girls –with or without clitorises – weren’t allowed to attend school. . . . And if they went out in the streets, it was never without a chaperone, and the girls and their mothers had to veil their bodies and faces.”

Besides being critical of men who place themselves above women, the book criticizes humans’ treatment of the planet. Earth is angry at the arrival of humans: “’What am I going to do with so many people living off of me!’” Earth and He (God?) arrive at an agreement so He would help Earth to produce enough. The agreement also defines “the unforgiveable exceptions to the natural order of things . . . any group that cursed, slandered, or plundered the Earth senselessly would be subjected to lethal heatwaves and freezes.” As the world becomes more populated, “Earth was even angrier. What she had known from the beginning was proving true: the hordes of humanity would strip her bare. Arrogant, they continued to build upon her surface, ignoring her.”

Despite its serious themes, there are some humourous touches. Who cannot smile at Eve’s comment that “Adam, who was aware of our nakedness, hid among some plants with very small leaves” or Adam and Eve’s attempts to procreate?

Some readers will find this an uncomfortable read. It questions the existence of God. Eve describes only an abstract Thunder who “expressed itself like falling rock, without words, without verbs, without adjectives; like long oooohs and aaaahs emanating from a fearsome throat, like the blows of an axe or shovel or hammer; but not guttural like the sounds a mouth makes; more like a weapon, or gunpowder.”

Though sometimes heavy-handed in its approach, the book does emphasize the power of words and stories: “The stories Adam invented had triumphed. And therein lies the power of the word: it shapes mankind, their customs, their communities. Words don’t just say things, they do things.” Certainly the novel should leave readers thinking about how the story in the Book of Genesis, definitely not written by women, has shaped the lives of women.

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DCYakabuski)
… (mais)
½
 
Assinalado
Schatje | Aug 14, 2023 |
Three stars? Four stars? I am honestly a little (a lot?) confused by this novel. I have read some articles online and have read two very different professional interpretations, and I agree with one of them (the more common one, woo hoo me??).

This is a coming-of-age novel of sorts. Only here a woman is looking back at the fears she had a s a child growing up in an upper middle class/upper class home in Mexico City. She had two older half sisters, and attended a private Catholic school. She was bullied at school and had an odd relationship with her mother (she shared her father with her sisters), who was a professional and respected artist. As a child, the narrator had a lot of fears. She was afraid of night noises (house creaks, etc), and constantly thought she heard footsteps. This is her BEFORE. Before becoming a woman, before having the rules and expectations of womanhood within her class and culture. Childhood was fun ad safety, my interpretation of the footsteps is they were her future--sneaking up on her. Womanhood and adulthood was responsibility, expectations, motherhood, menstruation, bras--the things tat caused her sisters to shut her out as they got older.She knew it was coming for her, but she didn't know what it meant.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Dreesie | 1 outra crítica | Jan 25, 2022 |
Features a young girl's experience in Agustini, Tabasco in the 60s. I fell in love with this book from the start. Even though the book was originally written in Spanish, I think the translations was done beautifully. The narrator, Delmira Ulloa, is eight years old at the beginning of the novel and having such a young narrator lends to some honest, insightful thoughts and some imaginative, vivid scenes.

A passage I liked:
"I ran to find Grandma, because I didn't know what else to do, and I had to do something. The red of the sky had tinted everything. The whole world was on fire. The ants I had been watching seemed to scurry up inside my throat. It was the time of the day for mosquitoes, but I couldn't hear a single insect sound because everything inside me was buzzing." p. 14… (mais)
 
Assinalado
alyssajp | Jul 29, 2019 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
44
Also by
6
Membros
673
Popularidade
#37,521
Avaliação
3.8
Críticas
9
ISBN
117
Línguas
6

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