“They said that no boy could live where I had lived. I knew my father resented me for what I had done to my mother’s insides.” After her birth, Ana Calderón’s mother isn’t able to carry a male child to full term, losing three baby boys. And when her mother dies, she becomes fully responsible for her seven younger siblings, ending her days of carefree romping on the beaches of southern Mexico. But even worse, she will carry forever her father’s resentment.
Ana is a young girl when her father decides to move his large, motherless brood to the United States. She just knows that her life will change for the better in the U.S. “My dream was beginning to come true. I didn’t know where we were going, but I felt that each step away from the palapa would lead me to the fulfillment of what I knew was my destiny.” Ana does encounter greater opportunity, but she discovers that in the U.S. too, society, family and religion scheme to hold her back. In order to succeed, Ana must sacrifice all that she holds dear and re-make herself into a rootless and obsessed individual. But even after accomplishing this, fate still conspires against her.
Now available for the first time in Spanish, this fictional memoir of a talented woman born in tradition-bound rural Mexico takes a compelling look at immigration, women’s rights and the perennial search for love and the meaning of life. Originally published as The Memories of Ana Calderón, this is a powerful exploration of society’s expectations about women’s roles and one woman’s fight to rise to her full potential.
