#21 – Miscellany

So I didn’t meet my commitment with self of posting every weekend, but hey, I was consistent for practically five months. And I’m back. In these two weeks I went to a family wedding in California, which brings me to my first point…

You know, I’ve always wondered about the “cultural differences” that mainstream USA talks about when referring to us Hispanics or Latinos (however you call us). I always tend to minimize that aspect. I ask what differences are they talking about. I know we work hard, and we work for family, our children’s education, not having debt, etc. I don’t know how different that is from Mainstream USA. But in California two weeks ago, I walked into a family gathering and I was taken aback momentarily, my eyes and my heart making the necessary adjustments to recognize myself with the people gathered in a family celebration after the wedding. What was going on? Nothing really. Music was blaring from speakers in the nice patio overflowing with potted plants and trees, men were looking over the meat being cooked in a humongous copper pan, some women (my dear sister among them) were serving plates piled high with meat, tortillas and salsa. Yet I know that it was different from the “white” social gathering I go to in Texas even with my Hispanic friends already assimilated to the main culture. So I’m here to finally tell you that those “cultural differences” do exist. I just would have a hard time defining them for you and me. This observation took me a couple of minutes and it wasn’t long before I felt I was in my parents’ village in Michoacán. Very soon I felt totally at home among strangers and far away from my Texas lair.

MY MOVIES – Once back in the Metroplex, my husband and I went to the movies. We went to see a movie I practically had no information about except that it was in French. So off we went to the Angelika in Plano. The movie is actually in French and Arabic. It’s a long movie, even slow, but it’s tragic and it’s beautiful. If you’re the sensitive type it can make you cry (my husband is very sensitive) because it deals with some area in the Middle East torn by war. The movie shows us the turns of fate that can occur during violent unrest.

The movie tells the story of one young woman in love and pregnant who is saved from a sure death in hands of her brothers for bringing dishonor to the family by being pregnant. She has a son who she gives up to an orphanage. Later, after committing an act of violence during the war she ends as a prisoner where she is tortured and raped, and ends pregnant by her torturer. She gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, and moves to Canada.

The movie starts with her death and the young adult twins receiving as part of their mother’s will two letters: one for their father that the girl needs to find; while her brother gets a letter that he needs to deliver to their brother of whom they don’t know about.

The girl travels to the other side of the world in search of their father, her brother’s heart is not into satisfying their mother’s last request, so he stays behind, until at last he unites with his sister.

They find out they didn’t really knew their mother, what she had been capable of enduring and all that she lived through. I won’t tell you the rest in case you want to find out the rest of the story. It’s worth seeing it, although emotionally hard to watch. The actors are superb, the story doesn’t let you go. The name of the movie is Incendies (Scorched), based on a play by Lebanon-born Wajdi Mouawad. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. With Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette and Rémy Girard.

MY BOOKS – I’ll be brief. I just finished reading Father of the Rain by Lily King. It’s the story of a girl and her relationship with her father. The first part puts us when the eleven-year-old Daley has to live through their parents’ divorce and how events mark us while we are in the midst of childhood. The second part, all grown up at 29, Daley feels she must go back to her father in New England because she’s hopeful she can help her old man recover from his addiction and in doing so, Daley changes her life forever as she gives up her just-secured great job as a professor at Stanford, and she’s brought to the brink of losing the man with whom she’s deeply in love.

In the last part, Daley, mother of two now, comes back home to face her dying father and give us closure. This was a great read for me, so much so that I just started The English Teacher also by Lily King.