This was a slightly tough one for me to get finished before the deadline as I started reading late, but luckily its length meant that I was able to get it done with enough time to spare which is a positive for me. Although I got through it, this was definitely a slower pace of writing than I’m used to, so it was a bit of a slog to read through at times.

That being said, embedded within the minutia of the text, Mama Blanca’s Memoirs contains a very interesting examination of how memory and remembering form and re-inform the foundations of interpersonal societal understanding. Teresa De la Parra’s novel explores the functionality of memory throughout one’s life and how it can be manipulated to serve specific purposes. In this case, the existence of the Foreword as part of the fictional text highlights the flattening potential of the written word. Our perspective of Mama Blanca’s childhood comes filtered through both herself writing it years later as well as the unnamed narrator that “prun[es]” away much of Mama Blanca’s original writing (De la Parra 15). Therefore, we can see the few remaining vestiges of Mama Blanca’s account as a nostalgia-driven pastoral re-imagining of a childhood that seeks to outline the fundamental and personal understanding that Mama Blanca imbued on her surroundings.

To begin, Mama Blanca’s parents reinforce classist, hierarchical and patriarchal systems of control. As a privileged child living with land-owning parents, these systems of control do not threaten or oppress Mama Blanca in the way that I am used to reading about them. Papa “rule[s] Piedra Azul…with careless authority” and despite his many “explosions” at various members of the small community for not conforming to his views and wishes, Mama Blanca refuses to acknowledge her father’s “cruelty” (103, 97, 70). Blanca Nieves’ mother, while not as overtly hostile towards digressions from cultural acceptability, nonetheless educates her daughters within very deliberate boundaries. Her mother’s insistence that she always be able to “put up [Blanca Nieves’] hair” demonstrates her strict adherence to traditionally appropriate presentations of gender (28). Her disciplining of Violeta also serves as a watershed moment in Blanca Nieves’ young life. Mama becomes the “Grand Inquisitor” whose authority structures the potentiality for happiness or sadness within the young girls’ lives (41).

In comparison, where her parents set the boundaries upon her limits of expression and individuality, a character like Vicente Cochocho grounds Blanca Nieves in her socioeconomic place. Cochocho is an eclectic man who has unique expertise in everything from “philosophy” to the “natural sciences” (70). His divergence from “acceptable” habits and standards of living cause Blanca Nieves’ father a great deal of consternation and fury. We see the arrogance inherited in Blanca Nieves as she likens Cochocho to the earth as a “good plant” (65). This comparison ties Cochocho to the land, and since Blanca Nieves’ family has the privilege of land ownership, implies that she sees his body and labour as belonging to her family just as the land does.

To finish off with a question: To what extent do you believe that Mama Blanca’s memoirs were altered by the unnamed editor to serve some unknown motivation of their own?