Review Of "Canícula: Snapshots Of A Girlhood En La Frontera" By N. E. Cantú

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1-1-1996

Published In

Choice

Abstract

Cantú offers a fictionalized memoir of growing up in the bicultural space between Monterrey, Mexico, and San Antonio, Texas, during the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. She tells the story of her youth through a collage of fascinating photographs, some actually included in the book, others clearly engraved in the narrator's memory. All of these constitute unforgettable poetic images of a time and space, images that capture movingly a family's solidarity, love, and dignity as it experiences birth, economic hardship, triumph, war, peace, and death. At the center of all of these events is la frontera (the border), perhaps the text's true protagonist, which, on the one hand, instills in the narrator a profound sense of her unique freedom of movement between two very different worlds and, on the other serves as a constant reminder of the precarious nature of her cultural identity. All collections.

Comments

This work is freely available courtesy of Choice Reviews. The review has been reproduced in full in the abstract field.

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