The book Mama Blanca’s Memoirs is about the narrator who recalls her earlier years as a young girl and her time spent around the central figure of the novel, Mama Blanca. While the book itself is called Mama Blanca’s Memoirs, the novella is actually a memoir of the author or the narrator recalling her memories of Mama Blanca. In the novel, Mama Blanca is described as a strong willed, but kind hearted old lady, as she is described as being in her seventies, who enjoys playing Beethoven on her piano and spending time in the garden listening to the chirping of birds and other animals.

As described in the preface, the central theme of Mama Blanca’s Memoirs is the sense of past memory, or more accurately nostalgia. Both primary characters of the novel experience nostalgia, Blanca Nieve (Snow White), narrates the entire novel based on a feeling of nostalgia for a childhood past that she spent in the care and company of Mama Blanca, while we are given hints to Mama Blanca’s own past and her desire to return to that past. The sugar plantation plays an important role in the story as it reminds Mama Blanca of what she has lost in her life and the sweet memories that she associates with the sugar plantation. While de la Parra reflects on the lost memories and nostalgia for the past for both Blanca Nieve and Mama Blanca, she does not linger on the idea of a lost past for too long as she describes the beauty and wonder inherent in living in the present and how living in the present is usually a preferable way to live than dwelling on previous memories.

What I also find interesting is the use of ‘blanca’ or white to bring colour to the novel. Snow White and Mama Blanca (literally, ‘mother white’) share this connection with the colour white, as the classic fairy tale Snow White (or at least the familiar Disney version) describes Snow White’s name as coming from her “skin as white as snow”. Indeed refined sugar, which we associate with Mama Blanca’s sugar plantation, also shares the connection of the colour white through its appearance. I am sure that de la Parra used this use of white, as a symbol of youthful innocence and sweetness, both for Blanca Nieve’s youth and Mama Blanca’s youth.

Listening to the lecture provided by Jon, also made me wonder about the reliability of the narration throughout the novel, as we are told the story of Mama Blanca’s past through two different sources before it arrives to us, who is not to say that the story was embellished on the way to us?

My discussion is: What do you think is the symbolism behind the use of the colour white in Mama Blanca’s Memoirs?