Mama Blanca’s Memoirs, for all its intriguing subject matter on the loss of innocence and the advancement of culture, has the greatest effect on the reader when describing female relations as well as the contrasting attitudes of their generations. In the unlikely friendship–or perhaps guardianship–between an older woman “not yet seventy” and a young girl just a few years before turning “twelve,” there is an intergenerational connection, what I interpreted as a link between the old Victorian world and an emerging modern life which would see its fruition in the subsequent 20th century. Additionally, alongside an emerging modernism, the class strife endemic to the 19th century is touched upon through scenes such as the conflict of Blanca’s sisters; depictions of colonial hierarchies as shown through Piedra Azul’s servants; and most prominently, class is shown through differences in age and experience: the choice of the young girl in the relationship–really the stand-in for the author–to publish the memoir. 

    Nonetheless, I appreciated the look at Latin Victorian-era attitudes through an unbiased approach, refusing to take a stance on positives or negatives and simply stating how Mama Blanca behaved, a true memoir which does not seek to defame or exaggerate, only to remember. For instance, on their first meeting the older woman invites the girl in for cake, a traditional hospitality which seeks to present both females in stark contrast yet still connecting with a sense of shared kinship. The old woman is also described as an artist, perhaps as an intentional placement of Mama Blanca as an outsider and the catalyst for her decision to start a friendship with the girl. “As always, people based their judgment on outward appearances” the girl writes on the view of her relationship with a woman old enough to be her great-grandmother, accentuating the fact that the two are isolated together. I believe this relationship helps to illustrate how women are not only often persecuted by the standards of the times–such as in dress code, decorum and social standing–but also criticised by the women unwittingly upholding these discriminatory rules. It is only through a special, unique relationship such as Mama Blanca and the girl that one can find freedom in Latin America–and this plays into a sense of liberty which is undoubtedly a theme which will rear its head in future texts for this course. 

    Overall, I found the story to be well-written and a great start to the course. The ways in which the text captures Latin American lifestyles through a stand-in narrator while also touching on problems running parallel through the old days and contemporary times makes it more readable today. My question to the class would be at what points is Mama Blanca portrayed negatively in the text through her behaviour, and what points are positives? Additionally, are the positives always in line with contemporary thought and how we think today? S