As you finish reading the collection “The Moths and Other Stories,” please feel free to write about anything you’d like. Here are some prompts to get you started thinking:
- Choose one or more of the 3 key background figures in Chicana feminist literature–La Malinche, La Virgin de Guadalupe, La Llorona–and discuss places in the last 4 stories where you see this figure emerging. Are there metaphorical references to her? Parallels with certain characters? Revisions of what these figures traditionally represent?
- Focus on a single story and discuss it. You might talk about how the story works on a technical level (narration style, point-of-view, recurring images/motifs, endings, etc.) Or you might discuss what you think the story is about on a thematic level. Did you like the story or not like it? Why?
- Perhaps discuss a recurring theme that you see develop across several of the final stories: maybe religion/spirituality; fragmentation; community; mothers and children; class relations, etc.
Focusing on a single story, I chose “Snapshots” to analyze. Specifically, on a technical level, I found the recurring images/motifs and the point of view within this short story to be the most crucial points that help the story to flow so well. From the start, we are introduced to an older woman, one who is struggling with the reflections of her past now that she is left with nothing to do. Her child is grown, her ex-husband is no longer in the picture, and she is in conflict with attempting to keep her days occupied that now lack the things that once gave her structure. A recurring theme throughout was tied between motifs (snapshots from her past) and images of nostalgia. She writes, “The photo albums are unraveling and stained with spills and fingerprints and are filled with crinkled faded gray snapshots of people I can’t remember anymore. I turn the pages over and over again to see if somehow, some old dream will come into my blank mind” (117). Here we see literal photos representing pieces of her life. The continuous motif of “snapshots” works to include emotions and personal experiences within the narrative. This is important because the action of flipping through images carries the storyline through her point of view in a more intimate way. This intimacy through snapshots helps to establish the speaker and what it is to be a woman once you are stripped of what once was. It is important to consider here the effect time has on women, not only in a physical way but in a spiritual way. She writes that, “As a result, I began to convince myself that my best years were up and that I had nothing to look forward to” (116). We often feel that youth is what we must grab hold of, always trying to stay young, but by doing so we must also grant ourselves grace as we age. Women do not lose value or importance with age, but rather gain a new perspective and phase of life as we see here in “Snapshots.” I think that the point of view used within this story is to thank for the masterfully written analysis of growth.
“The Cariboo Cafe” really reminded me of another book I’ve been reading lately, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana. It focuses on one apartment building but flips between perspectives of different tenants, the stories linking together at unexpected points, giving every side of the story at times, and at others letting the readers piece together their guesses. This Viramontes story hd those elements of flipped perspective in each of the three parts, and I found myself going back and re-reading pages to puzzle it together. I love how we start with the point of view of a child— an eldest sister caring for her brother, dragging him around town seems very similar to other stories I’ve read in this collection, and I assumed the entire story would be from this perspective. The way it switched to the owner of the restaurant, though, was very well done in my opinion: its sudden and unexpected, but ted together perfectly by mentioning “the zero zero place” casting out shadows and then immediately giving us the voice of the owner complaining about the strange name of the restaurant. I’m interested in writing and reading stories told from various or strange perspectives, so I just loved this child-like view of calling a restaurant by her own nickname for it, thinking of it as a refuge, and then giving a completely different voice of the owner. He’s right off the bat more realistic, more hardened in contrast to her innocence. First in the story we see this view of a scared child, then of a man who has apparently lost a child, a wife, and then lastly we see a mother fighting desperately for her child. The stories converge both thematically and jus tin terms of location. It reminded me of “A Clean, Well-Lighted, Place—” a safe haven in the form of a restaurant. The varying points of view allowed the story to become more shocking and darker as it went on.
I really enjoyed reading “Cariboo Cafe”, especially after “The Broken Web”. Both stories switch perspectives throughout the sections of the story, and as a reader you need to do more work in piecing together the context clues in order to understand it. While I was reading “The Broken Web”, I felt as though I could piece it together somewhat easily, especially compared to “Cariboo Cafe”. Whilst reading the latter, I had a harder time understanding who the characters were and what the relationship was between them all. There was a mothers perspective of losing her son, but it also could’ve been the sister who simply looked after and cared for her brother like he was her child. That aspect of their relationship was very clear throughout part I, yet in part II, the man who owns the cafe observes the brother, sister, and an older lady. He assumes the lady is a kidnapper later when he sees the same two kids as reported missing on the tv. During my first read, I thought the older lady was the same person who watched over the brother during the days. However, as the story progresses, I’m completely unsure. I’m looking forward to discussing this story in class and seeing what everyone else interpreted the story as, for I am a little lost.
I chose to focus on the story “Neighbors”. Aura is an older woman living alone and ill. She describes her place of neighborhood as slowly metamorphosing into a graveyard. Her also elderly neighbor mourns the loss of his son who was murdered within the confines of his neighborhood. He still “talks to” his deceased son, and many of the neighbors see him as crazy. Aura is bitter toward the younger generation, as they possess so much of what she lacks in her own life. Being ill, she finds it hard to complete tasks as simple as holding a glass of water. Aura is consumed with daily pain and loneliness. She loathes and envies her younger neighbors, full of life. Whereas Aura resents her old age, Fierro, her neighbor, embraces it in a sense. Aura, when bothered by her younger neighbors, calls the cops on them. Fierro on the other hand, wishes impatient and honking truckers a long life. The two characters contrast each other, and show the opposite spectrums of aging. One night, Aura looks through her window to see Fierro laughing while the strange unnamed woman who appeared to see Fierro dances for him. Aura has a moment of wishing she too could dance and laugh, yet is quickly brought back to her bitter reality when faced with her pains.
I chose to focus on a theme recurring in the final four stories rather than just one story in particular. The theme of religion and spirituality is salient throughout all of Viramontes’s writings in this collection of stories. Focusing on the final four stories we notice the nuanced approach to Religion. In The Cariboo Cafe, we first see God through Sonya’s eyes as she manipulatively holds the fear of God’s future punishment over her younger brother. Even at such an early age, Macky has learned to fear God’s wrath while Sonya has learned to use God’s wrath to acquire Macky’s obedience to her. This case can also be connected to the many instances of Institutional Religion weaved throughout the previous stories as a demonstration of learned power dynamics. Sonya has learned to use God as a fear tactic from witnessing the adults around her who presumably did the same either to her or others around her. Later in the story, we see God being questioned by adults not in front of children but within their own psyche as with Geraldo’s mother who confides in the Lord but then later contemplates the disappointment she has in a God who would allow her son to be taken from her. This gives us a glimpse into Viramontes’s mind on the dichotomy of Religion and its displacement of the spiritual because religion tells us how we should behave in order to be in God’s good grace whereas spirituality is instinctual and intrinsic.
This paradigm of institutional religion versus spirituality is further developed in The Long Reconciliation. Chato lives by the Priest’s words to “save every penny” in the hope of building a family home then berates his wife saying, “You acted like God, Amanda. I acted like a man should.” This demonstrates how Chato symbolizes the patriarchal catholic man who sees the priest as God’s spokesman and authority over social life. In contrast, Amanda, who still has roots in institutional religious tradition, takes the authority of her life into her own hands by aborting their child. This is an act Chato can never forgive that leads to further ‘sin’ through the act of adultery. Focusing on Amanda’s choice to abort her child is important because she speaks of how their bodies are different from men and women. Amanda could not bear her child to live a life of pain and misery and decided to listen to her instincts of letting the child go rather than the tradition of having children because that is what they are supposed to do even if that meant ridicule and neglect from her spouse, neighbors and priest.