READ
Magical realism seems to be a
staple of Latin American literature, so I was not surprised to find it in the
book I read for Ecuador, Bruna
and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City, by Alicia Yánez
Cossío.
The title character, Bruna, comes from an eccentric family that was once
wealthy but has since squandered most of their riches. They are descended from
a Spanish explorer and an indigenous woman who was forced to marry him. The family
lives in a mountain village where everyone seems to be affected by a sluggishness
attributed to soroche, or altitude
sickness.
The book is full of stories about Bruna’s relatives, both
living and long dead. We learn about the great-great-grandfather who died in a
duel over who was going to sit where at a fiesta; the rich great aunt who captured
the attention of all the men in the city; the great uncle whose life's work was
to weave a carpet so long that the Pope would be able to walk on it all the way
from Rome; the great uncle who was obsessed with frogs and built a huge frog
nursery; the uncle whose matchbox collection took over the house; and the aunt
whose obnoxious displays of piety made everyone else’s lives miserable as she
plotted her own ascent into heaven.
Death is a major theme in this book, as someone or another
is always dying in the family, which means everyone has to dress in black for
months on end. This is particularly vexing for Bruna, who is young and vibrant
and wants to wear colorful clothes. No sooner does the period of mourning end
for one family member than someone else dies. Bruna would rather focus on
living, knowing that “one lives only once and that a beautiful, full life, as deep
as the limitless sea, is barely an atom in the eternity of time.”
Another theme is the conflict between the European settlers
and the indigenous people, which is most poignantly expressed in the story of
the family’s matriarch, whose name and religion were taken from her when she
was forced to marry Bruna’s great-great-grandfather. “And she was named María
from the moment they spilled water over her bowed head and washed away the idea
of the sun god, chilling her heart, which had been warmed by the fire of his
rays, and told her about some unknown god who seemed to get angry much more
often than he should have.”
Because so much of the book is devoted to Bruna’s relatives,
it took me a long time to realize that Bruna herself was undergoing an
awakening that coincided with the awareness that was developing in women all
over the world at the time of the book’s publication in 1971. She was beginning
to question the way things had always been, with women considered to be good for nothing except
to be wives and mothers. As the narrator says, “The women were giant ovaries,
dressed in black.” Bruna begins to resent the unequal treatment of boys and
girls, and she finally decides to take control of her own life, because, “[i]f
you only lived once, it was necessary to feel fully like a human, a person, a
woman.” Only by leaving the sleeping city does Bruna begin to experience the
fullness of life.
COOK
No particular Ecuadorian dishes are mentioned in Bruna
and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City, so I went to the International
Vegetarian Union website to look for a recipe. I
found one for quinoa
soup with potatoes and tomatoes that sounded intriguing. It turned out
okay, but the recipe calls for two cups of soy milk, which resulted in a pretty
strong soy taste. If I had it to do over again, I’d either try almond milk
instead, or just use vegetable broth.
The book contains numerous references to the family’s cherry
tree: “a very tall, hundred-year-old cherry tree that dropped its fruit all
over the orchard and onto the neighbors’ patios and whose branches sheltered
hundreds of skittish and gluttonous singing birds.” And since it happens to be
cherry season here right now, it seemed only fitting that I have a nice bowl of
cherries for dessert after my soup.
GIVE
GlobalGiving listed
many different projects in Ecuador that were in need of donations. I didn’t
have to read very far, however, before finding the one I wanted to support, a
library bus that will take books and other materials to children in six remote coastal
villages in the Manabi province. This bus will supplement an existing program
in which Domingo the donkey has been taking books to the children in a
different village, following the devastation of Manabi province in an
earthquake in 2016. More information about the library bus project is available
at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/library-bus-for-northern-manabi-coast-ecuador/.
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