Tag Archives: and we sold the rain

09/23/21

Us vs Them

We never discussed in class the effect of the change from third-person narration to the first-person plural narration at the end of “And We Sold the Rain” by Carmen Naranjo. This is something that I have been thinking about and I would like to share my thoughts on its effect.

The use of “And” in the title suggests a sense of desperation since it sounds like the end of an extensive list of goods that the country had to sell to get itself out of debt. The “And” adds to the satirical and hyperbolic tone of the story in which Naranjo is critiquing the international organizations that economically destroyed this nation forcing them to sell their natural resource of rain to stay afloat. The “We” in the title however adds a sense of collectivity in this mass economic struggle.

After numerous failed attempts by this nation’s leadership to dig themselves out of debt, the citizens were forced to finally escape this unsustainable country. Once the citizens fled from their economic oppression, the narration turns to the first-person plural, with the line “In that country, we were second class citizens, something we were already accustomed to.” (pg 156). There is a sense of awakening and hope for the citizens of this unnamed nation, that perhaps this new country will be better. This line also acts as a critique of the unjust distribution of wealth. However, the line “the emir asked for a loan, then another, then many” (pg 156) indicates that while there may have been a moment of hope, the never-ending vicious cycle of a loan and debt repayment catches up to them again. The cyclical nature of this story is representative of the dependency that the international organizations forced upon Latin American countries resulting in economic crises during the 1970s and 1980s.

Naranjo never names the nation at focus in this story, but critiques explicitly the multinational organizations at fault for the crisis. The anonymity of the nation in contrast with the explicit naming of the international organizations acts as a powerful attack from Naranjo, there is no doubt who the villain is in this story. The impact of the change from third-person narration to first-person plural narration is that it reminds the reader that there are real victims of these irresponsible financial decisions of those in power and brings the story to a personal level.

09/23/21

Marquez and Naranjo

Magical realism is a powerful tool within Latin American literature as it challenges our conceptions of life and culture. In Naranjo’s “And We Sold the Rain” the seemingly impossible within regular life highlights the strain of the economic crisis in the collective conscious. In our class discussion, we briefly touched on Naranjo’s use of intertextuality and reference to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work. While there is a direct reference with the mention of “Macondo,” there seem to be stylistic similarities between “And We Sold the Rain” and “100 Years of Solitude” (pg. 151). Marquez begins “100 years of solitude” stating “Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía” would remember the first time his father showed him ice (pg. 1). Naranjo begins her piece quite similarly, focusing on one man of power, a climactic moment, and a distorted sense of time. Naranjo’s narrator is omniscient, narrating what the treasury minister said “a few days ago” similarly to how Marquez begins his story in both the future and the past (pg. 151). Both Marquez and Naranjo play with time as a concept at the start of their stories as if to suggest that the nature of the problems that face both men are cyclical.  This technique also drops the reader immediately into the meat of the story and gives them a view of the potential conflict. Additionally, the cyclical nature of time points to a trend in magical realism that focuses on generational stories and struggles. I found the introductions of both stories to feel quite similar in style and am interested to see if others feel similarly.