Journey's End?

At Bookworks in Albuquerque. Photo by Jocelyn Fafard, UNM.

Hard to believe that just 7 days ago I returned to L.A. after making a 2000 mile round trip to New Mexico for signing and reading of The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood. I look happy, don't I?

That's because I made it from Taos to Albuquerque in record time and the seats were filled with family–my brother and his partner, my cousins and their family, strangers who crept out of the aisles and lingered, and an online comadre, Dawn Wink (her book, Meadowlark is just out), who drove down from Santa Fe with her family. Hail to book lovers!

Jocelyn Fafard is a UNM student who arrived with her mom to interview me for her journalism class. The two stared off in opposite directions when I read a scene ripe with sexual awakening and intrigue but the stage was set and I forged ahead. Shoppers edged closer to hear and I looked at my brother who beamed with pride for his big sister and repentant childhood tormentor.

Dawn Wink wrote a review of The Sandoval Sisters for StoryCircle.

 "Was there an autobiographical aspect to the book?"

A bit. The book is set circa 1841-1848 in Santa Fe. I'm old, but not that ancient. Yet, I have passed through distinct stages in my life: maiden, mother and yeah, crone. Each of the Sandoval Sisters' is unique and distinct from the other, but family loyalty is important to them. They've been gifted with a certain joy I experienced in a moment of time. Some of Alma's experiences in Texas are reminiscent of my mother's sojourn there when she married my dad. And la gente's superstitions are the ones that vibrated throughout my family and surrounding community in Santa Fe.

My brother and Dawn had to head back to Santa Fe, but my cousins took me out to Sadie's, a popular Mexican restaurant in Albuquerque.         

Julia Flowers, my cousin's granddaughter, appeared in Bless Me, Ultima (my review).  

 She didn't eat all that by herself!

The next day it was time for Joey and me to hit the road.  This time I took it easy, with frequent stops for photos.  New Mexico segued into Arizona.

Same backdrop but now with a colorful toy train crossing. I so wanted to hear the train whistle.

 These shacks near a reservation. I pulled over to give Joey water and a walk and ended up buying a shell necklace from a vendor also named Sandra.




This journey brought me back in time–to memories of my mom, my childhood, the bullies who made my girlhood fraught with sorrow, to the resilience, and yes, even the creativity I learned to counteract them and pass the lonely winter nights when my mom worked, my brother slept and the wind howled outside.

The 2000 mile round trip also brought me forward in time to the present I've created for myself. It was an opportunity for me to connect on a deeper level with my brother and to continue to try to understand my deceased mother.  I spoke at Santa Fe High and hope that what I revealed to the students might give a few of them hope that there is life beyond high school and out of Santa Fe. 

Santa Fe was at once more horrible (with such an Anglicized reverence for all things ethnic that the heart of Native American and Mexican and Hispanic lost its relevance for me; there are diamond vendors cropping up around the plaza, reputedly money laundering vehicles) and greater than my youthful experience and rejection of it, but NM, and especially Taos warmed my heart.  

NM mountains and vast, blue sky over the rear of my truck at the dog park, my favorite place in Santa Fe. I met the nicest people there; they were all smiling and so were their dogs.

Imagined my husband and I watching the sunset there, holding hands, really looking at each other.

"Sometimes you get to meet yourself in the midst of running away."

Oratoria, the eldest sister:  "Which are the more true, the memories then or those simmered over time?"

Sandra Ramos O'Briant:  "There's a dissonance to memories. Like heat rising off the desert and creating a mirage, the art is in taking the distortion and helping the reader to see."

THE SANDOVAL SISTERS SIZZLE!

Oratoria, The Spinster and Keeper of the Secrets

     You're nobody until someone at La Bloga likes what you've created.  Featured below is Michael Sedano's review of The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood, which he graciously bought at the Autry after a reading there. Click on the link above for the full review:

     "When I took The Sandoval Sisters’ Secret of Old Blood off my “to-be-read” stack it was none too soon and about time. What a treat to enjoy the joys of sly smiles and breathless intervals between racist attacks, yanqui invasions, local color, gender ambiguity, jealous lovers, patient lovers, huge cultural paradigm shifts.

   

   Set in New Mexico in the decades leading to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the story of four women comes ready-made with cultural references and a literary heritage. Most notably, as a uniquely New Mexico story with plot lines filled with miracles and mystical prescience, O’Briant fits into literary space created by Rudolfo Anaya’s timeless Bless Me, Ultima.
 
      O’Briant’s story of the Sandoval sister married into a slave-owning Texas family has a counterpart in Arturo Madrid’s In the Country of Empty Crosses. Set in New Mexico beginning fifty years after the Sandoval Sisters stories, Madrid’s depiction of ever-present tensions between Catholic and Protesant gente, raza and anglo, reflects the creative history O’Briant thrusts upon the indomitable Alma.  

     Historicity sets a background and defines cultural rules that constrains an author’s work. Eroticism has fewer boundaries, and here Sandra Ramos O’Briant gives herself an almost free hand. There’s the soltera sister, the keeper of familia knowledge. There’s the consolation prize bride, Pilar, a 14-year old. Her middle-aged husband looks forward to training her body. Alma, the intended bride, runs off to Texas with a nice cowboy.  The author enjoys placing characters into sexual situations just because she can.  But that’s why it’s a romp of a novel, lots of passion."
                                                    

The Female Shaman in Bless Me, Ultima

The title to the movie, Bless Me, Ultima, carries the key to unlock its magic and riches, for blessings rain down on those who seek to understand.  Isn’t that the ultimate goal of life on earth?  Antonio’s older brothers return from the war changed men.  Perhaps because his mother wants her youngest child to become a priest, Antonio’s mind is filled with questions about the nature of man, and of good and evil.  It’s post-WWII in the United States, and many Americans have these questions in their hearts. You’ll find all the elements of a coming-of-age tale in this movie: violence and kindness, expectations crushed, hope renewed, mysteries revealed, love and humor. 

And then there’s Ultima.

She’s an elderly medicine woman, a curandera, who delivered young Antonio into the world and who has now come to live with his family.  The movie doesn’t explore her past except to show that she is both revered and feared.  She shows Antonio how to see the world in a new way, and she’s fearless in her wisdom.  “If a person wants to know he will listen and see and be patient,” Ultima says.  “Knowledge comes slowly.”

This is the only movie of which I’m aware that shows a female shaman guiding a young male in his perceptions.  That alone sets it apart.  The Tao Te Ching says, "A shaman has mastered Nature; not in the sense of conquering it, but of becoming it." Her gentleness, strength and knowledge is the same as Merlin’s in Sword in the Stone or Miyagi in the Karate Kid, but we’re not in a fantasy medieval world or in California.  We’re in real post-war New Mexico.

The setting is a part of America a few of us have been fortunate enough to have visited, and where some of us (me) have been blessed to grow up.  The sweeping yellow vistas of the llano (plains) where Ultima and Antonio go to collect herbs are gorgeous.  One can almost feel the sun and smell the wind that sweeps across the river.  Ultima is one with her world and the role she plays in it, and her appreciation of nature is passed to Antonio. These are the peaceful moments, but Antonio’s young life is rife with violence.  He sees two men killed and his friend drowned.  Because of his innocence, he is a channel Ultima uses to combat true evil.  Then, she is accused of being a witch.

“You must find your own truth,” she tells Antonio.  Folk beliefs occur in all cultures and all parts of our country.  For Antonio, the battle is between staunch old-school Catholicism and the spiritual connectedness with all on earth that he learns from Ultima.  He understands that he must think for himself without any disrespect for his heritage which emphasized tradition and obedience.  He loves Ultima, and has a profound respect for her.

Based on Rudolfo Anaya's award-winning and banned novel (in Az.) of the same name.  The book was required reading for my sons in high school. Carl Franklin both directed and wrote the screenplay.  The cast, led by Miriam Colon (Ultima) and newcomer Luke Ganalon (Antonio) take us on an unforgettable journey.

Take your friends and family to see this movie.  The history, the family, the boy, and Ultima will guide you home.