From the start of the book of “Faces in the Crowd,” I thought I was going to emphasize with the narrator who is a mom to two children and has a husband. It seemed to be that she was struggling raising her kid, her depression during and after pregnancy, while being in a marriage that lost its love. As a woman, I’ve been surrounded by women I know that have been through these things. It’s unfortunately no surprise.
BUT NAH. The narrator’s definition of reciprocity was making ‘sleeping arrangements’ for people (women that weren’t her husband pretty much LOL). I think I laughed when I read that… and I actually lost it when she was hiding all this cheating with Dakota. I’m not justifying the lack of presence in the narrator’s life as he clearly seemed to like her in a physical way and wanted her for kids. Also according to their son, man had some mood swings that became an issue for the family. Anyway, I didn’t see much emotional love in their relationship, especially from the husband’s side. To the point where the narrator says how she is “conceiving an infinite hatred of the other.” Crazy right. Maybe y’all thought another kid would solve whatever love-less marriage you had, but let’s be so real, when is this going to ever happen.
OH YEAH. We love hiding and lying to our husbands even more. The narrator also has her moment with a female prostitute, Iselin as if Dakota, some random girlie wasn’t enough. I didn’t expect this at all honestly. Maybe it’s because I don’t typically see mom’s in my life do a brief switch to the other side. I mean go for it, but the husband being unaware of this, until he finds the narrator’s laptop open and see’s she is writing about Iselin and the narrator’s sexual interactions. At this point, I’ve given up on whatever family thing the narrator was trying to bring back together. All I have to say is these poor kids. If both my parents were this fucked (please excuse my language), I would’ve had such trauma that would even affect my future relationship/s.
Sure, Papa is missing. But Momma is also confused and finds you kids emotionally invaluable. Actually the legs and mini-skirts are a lot more important. No offence, but before you pop out a kid or even conceive one you must know that things won’t be the same! Be it a mom or dad, you have to have room emotionally to literally have infinite love for them to truly be good parents. Regardless if you’re poor, half-alive, physically unavailable, or whatever excuse there is, your kid is going to be your everything. A kid should rarely feel like a chore, nor something that you simply don’t want to raise.
Yes, identity is something that takes people a long time to figure out and sometimes it changes significantly. Although, I think there needs to be conversation if it is going to affect your loved ones.
There’s a part near the end of the book where the narrator is reminded of Julio Torri’s ideas of cycling being like a thought of freedom. Like can I get on the cycle instead.
Question: do we like the Narrator as a character in the book? do you think Valeria Luiselli has experienced these things herself ? (lol)
Adia, I love the title!
But… this is a complicated book, and I think you have got some things wrong about it, confusing times and places…
Now, I need to re-read the book myself this weekend, but I think what we have is…
1. A woman with kids (“sad momma”), writing a book in Mexico City…
2. She is writing about her time, some years previously, when she was younger (and unmarried) in New York. Dakota belongs to this timeline…
3. She is also interested in a Mexican poet (Gilberto Owen) who was in New York in the 1920s. Iselin belongs to this timeline.
Now, the complication is that these three timelines (and in fact there’s a fourth, with Owen later in Philadelphia after his own marriage has broken down) blur into each other: Owen thinks he sees our narrator on the subway, as a sort of “memory of the future.” It’s also not clear how much of the second timeline (the narrator in New York) is made up; the sad momma tells her suspicious husband that these are just characters.
I hope my lecture clears this up a little… I haven’t recorded it yet (I plan to do that today), but the transcript is uploaded already.
We will try to bring clarity in our class discussion next week!
It’s also possible, by the way, that the “real” author of all this is not “sad momma” but Owen himself. As I say, it’s complicated!
Thank you for your clarification on the complexities within the book. Upon reflection, I can see how there may have been some misinterpretations on my part regarding the timelines especially. I definitely knew that there is a lot of back and forth with the past, present, reality and fiction. I had read the transcript and watched videos related to the book. Although, like you said, it’s a blurring distinction. While I may have interpreted certain aspects differently, I think varying perspectives make the text a lot more interesting. I look forward to class discussion and gaining more deeper insights on the book 🙂
Hi Adia! I found the narrator of the book (particularly the young woman) quite likable. She struck me as vibrant and spontaneous, though I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for her given her expressed sense of suffocation in her current routine as a mother. As for Valeria Luiselli’s personal experience with these events, I doubt they’re about her; I didn’t feel a connection between the author and her characters.
On Luiselli’s personal experience, see the first video here: https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/luiselli-videos/.
hi Adia,
I like the narrator pretty much! While her life, marriage, and chores for the children are stressful for her, I do think what she wrotes in her writing are interesting and vivid. Perhaps writing is a way of expressing her pressure and self from the reality.
Hi Aida! I love the title of your blog! to answer your question, I think maybe Luiselli or someone she may know might’ve experienced these things, or maybe she’s just making up things as she writes. So I guess I don’t really have a concrete answer to your question lmao
-Nini
Hi Aida! I really enjoyed the narrator as she showed many different aspects of life through her stuggles and experiences which were both stressful, simple and lively. It was interesting seeing the contrast between her own life and her writing.
Hello Adia. Honestly, I was too frustrated by this book to form an affinity for any of the characters. However, I did empathize with the mother’s struggles. She’s a creative who is losing the ability to express herself through her medium as freely as she wants to (due to time constraints). I wrote about this in my post. Sometimes school makes me feel this way.