Monsoon Mansion

I really liked how the author slowed down time and really expanded on the differences between her mother at the breakfast table and after she’s dressed.  I often feel, when I write, like there’s an hourglass running out and that I have to cram in a lot of information at once or spread out that amount of detail over a longer period of time in the book.  But this section gives us access to a lot of information at a digestible pace, all at the beginning of a chapter.  It slowly, and very visually, shows the duality that Estrella holds within her and how it effects the narrator.  “Mama was soft at breakfast.” (Barnes 24) and, “When breakfast ended, there was no orange left on Mama’s plate, just the peel.” (Barnes 28).  The author slows down time in a very natural way and allows the reader to absorb details about this important character, whose personality will come under scrutiny over and over again.  Because of all this detail, it’s easier to understand her, and know in our hearts her nature.  Instead of being completely shocked by her actions, we know what she has a capacity for. 

            When I first started reading the chapter about the narrator’s father’s life, I was a bit skeptical.  It was a big jump in time and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about him.  But instead of trying to recreate his younger days the way the author pieces hers back together, she changes tactics and gives his section a whole new voice.  His story takes on the veneer of a fairy tale, “Papa hiked down the cordillera, a man—a lawyer, a genie, an advisor to the prince—found him filling out forms at a recruitment agency in Manila.”  (Barnes 89).  His story sounds altogether different from the narrator’s, something that she can barely imagine to be true, and yet, down the line, changed her life, like an enchantment, for a short time.  The author gives her father’s story space, and focuses more on details of ambition.  It’s his story, and although it’s important to hers, she leaves him the mystery of his most personal details.  The poetry focuses on his circumstances, “Papa, the engineer and designer, the leader, the magician.  In the desert, Papa became like many of the stars he watched at night: Leo, the Lion; Orion, the Hunter; and Perseus, the Hero.” (Barnes 95).  Instead, she gives more attention to metaphors she associates with him, the stars, the cactus, and how they contribute to her myth of her father.  

            I thought the sense of foreboding we get before we meet Estrella’s new lover was very well done.  I thought he sounded particularly ogre-ish and had the image in my head before I saw she chose that word for him.  Even before he’s revealed, his presence sets off an instinctual alarm of danger for the narrator.  I thought his comparison to Elvis was interesting, an American icon, and the character had spent time there, and this un-canniness only makes him more monstrous.  There’s isn’t a massive amount of detail about him, but just enough that we despise him.    

            Water, swimming, the ocean, it comes up again and again in the book.  It became a symbol for her fight for survival.  Learning to swim to avoid drowning, yearning for the ocean and a new home, enduring tainted water, the element comes up a lot, but in a more self conscious way.  It felt more like a personal symbol, decided on after the fact, than an organic force in her life.

            I thought the author was able to smoothly weave in the colorist beauty ideals her culture has, and relate them to her personal experience in a way that didn’t feel forced.  It can be difficult to make sure a reader understands the greater cultural issues the character is dealing with, while still staying focused on the emotional impact it has on her.  When her young, newborn brother dies, the author is able to compare the features that each family member has.  From there she compares the features of the Virgin Mary statue.  “My parents chose to bury Tachio at the foot of the hill, within arm’s reach of Our Lady, where a mestizo—her sacred power encased in white Castilian skin—could watch over him…displaying the colonizer’s gift to the bloodline: Christianity, education, and rank.” (Barnes 22).  This passage includes the colonial history of the Philippines, as well as her personal experience, comparing herself with her mother and brother.        

-Iris