{"id":7,"date":"2023-01-16T22:14:26","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T05:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/?p=7"},"modified":"2023-01-16T22:14:26","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T05:14:26","slug":"week-two-mama-blancas-memoirs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/2023\/01\/16\/week-two-mama-blancas-memoirs\/","title":{"rendered":"Week two- Mama Blanca’s Memoirs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello! This week’s reading was on <\/span>Mama Blanca’s Memoirs<\/span><\/i> written by Teresa De la Parra and I thought it was an incredible story to start off the course. As the story is narrated by a young Blanca Nieves, I found it interesting how the narration highlights an innocent perspective of serious topics or recollections of the past. For example, Vicente Cochocho is a character subject to a fair amount of racism, which can be seen from Evelyn, who saw Vicente as \u201ca filthy, loathsome creature who, being a louse himself, probably had a head full of them\u201d. While Blanca is aware that these prejudiced comments originate from a \u201ccomplex, personal race hatred\u201d towards Cochocho, she and her young sisters view him with admiration regardless of his social position in comparison to her own. After describing the nature of his nickname, Blanca is quick to state that to her, his \u201cart and greatest glory was that of having made the ugly beautiful\u201d. Throughout this section of the story, the narrator continually expresses their admiration for Cochocho\u2019s wisdom and noble manner despite the views set forth by her caregivers. Personally, I feel as though in most literature I have read this child-like perspective is rarely explored and I found it interesting to view these topics through a unique lens.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, Something I first looked past but further investigated was the importance of names within this narrative. This significance was illuminated to me after Blanca\u2019s description of the cows, stating that \u201cbetween the cows and their names there existed a kind of harmony or concordance that was lacking between us and ours\u201d. Thinking deeper into this quote, I noticed how as Blanca described the cows, their names correspond quite literally to the traits they exhibit, such as sunshine having. Golden brown coating. On the other hand, the names of certain human characters seemed to contradict Blanca\u2019s perspective of that person, mainly in relation to their personality. For example, Blanca states that her sister Violeta embodied \u201cthe spirit of Juan Manuel the Desired\u201d rather than \u201cthe modest, sweet-smelling little winter flower\u201d that her name is based upon. Furthermore, Blanca perspective of Vicente\u2019s noble and kind personality does not reflect the literal meaning of his nickname \u201cCochocho\u201d, referring to a louse. I find this aspect of the story quite intriguing however am a little puzzled as why certain characters, such as the cows, use literal names in contrast to the complexity of the human characters\u2019 names and corresponding personality and would love to explore this theme more in depth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Discussion question:\u00a0<\/strong>Looking further into the meaning of your own name, do you think your own name matches its original meaning? How so? Do you think others would have the same perspective as you or not (e.g. how Blanca does not believe that Violetta’s name corresponds to the meaning of the name)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello! This week’s reading was on Mama Blanca’s Memoirs written by Teresa De la Parra and I thought it was an incredible story to start off the course. As the story is narrated by a young Blanca Nieves, I found it interesting how the narration highlights an innocent perspective of serious topics or recollections of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94962,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4,7,6],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-de-la-parra","tag-childhood","tag-perspective","tag-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94962"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312discussion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}