Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera. Updated Edition.

By Norma Elia Cantú

Winner of the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize

Canícula—the dog days—a particularly intense part of the summer when most cotton is harvested in South Texas. In Norma Cantú’s fictionalized memoir of Laredo in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, it also represents a time between childhood and a still-unknown adulthood. Snapshots and the author’s re-created memories allow readers to experience the pivotal events of this world—births, deaths, injuries, fiestas, and rites of passage.

In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the original publication, this updated edition includes newly written pieces as well as never-before-published images—culled from hundreds of the author’s family photos—adding further depth and insight into this unique contribution to Chicana literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9780826356208

Norma Elia Cantú

Norma Elia Cantú is the Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University and a professor emeritus at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She edits the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Culture and Traditions book series at Texas A&M University Press, and her articles on border literature, teaching English, quinceañera celebrations, and the matachines dance tradition have earned her an international reputation as a scholar and folklorist. Her award-winning book Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera chronicles her childhood experiences on the border. She lives in San Antonio.

Book preview

Prologue

In 1980 a car hits a man on a busy Paris street. Roland Barthes dies. The next morning, at the Café Colón in Madrid, a woman reads about the accident in El País over café con leche and churros. In Paris a few weeks later she buys Le Nouvel Observateur and reads it cover to cover; it’s a special issue on Roland Barthes. His book Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography is published.

In 1980 on the squeaky iron bed in a seventh-floor piso in Madrid two lovers intently go over photographs kept in an old cigar box. Snapshots and formal studio photos, yellowing and brittle, cover the antique linen bedspread, embroidered and edged with lace. The cigar smell sticks to the photos like the fine dust of time. The woman pieces together her lover’s life—the parents smile from black-and-white photos taken before the Spanish Civil War, the war that took the father and left the mother a widow. A baby—cherubic—sits on a manto and gives the camera a wary look; he’s an only son. An old girlfriend from England—young, wearing a sweater called a jersey pronounced hersay (she’s wearing a jersey called a Rebecca after the character in the movie Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm)—her blonde hair very fifties, smiles at the camera, dedicates the photo, To the one I love. He has offered his life in a sheaf of photos to an intimate stranger from an unknown land he cannot fathom, a land as far from Spain as the unknown, between two countries—Mexico and the United States—a land that’s to her as far as last night’s dream after listening to La Traviata and eating the dinner he cooked, chicken in red wine sauce, el vino tinto reminding her of her mother’s red-blood roses. A land that’s to him as far as the moon that waxes in the blue-purple sky above the treetops. She has no photographs to offer, to share her life through. Her photographs, silent witnesses of her life, her history, lie an ocean away, across the Atlantic, across the United States, across Texas, at the borderland where Mexico meets Texas. Her childhood home on San Carlos Street holds the photographs of her life; these are stuffed in shoe boxes tied with old shoelaces, treasured and safe in that land between that she calls la frontera, the land where her family has lived and died for generations.

In 1985, back in that safe space, between two countries, the woman Nena and her mother bring out the boxes, untie the white-turned-yellow shoelaces, and begin going through the memories. The smell of the past trapped along with the memories. For days, for weeks, for months, they hold the photographs reverently, and the stories come to them. Sometimes the sisters—Dahlia, Esperanza, Azalia, Margarita, Xóchitl—join them and then leave, taking their memories of things, the younger ones not remembering stories, only images, brief descriptions of how they wore a favorite dress; they grieve for a long-past missed birthday, remember a sisterly fight over a long-forgotten childish thing. The father, too, curious, interrupts, contributes stories. They continue, the mother filling in gaps for the daughter, of before, of the times before and during that she has forgotten, or changed in her mind—family, neighbors, celebrations, events. Some they both experienced yet remember differently; they argue amiably, each sticking to her version of what happened.

The woman Nena begins to shape her story, drawing it out as carefully as when she ripped a seam for her mother, slowly and patiently so the cloth could be resewn without trace of the original seam. The stories of her girlhood in that land in between, la frontera, her story; her story and the stories of the people who lived that life with her, one. But who’ll hear it?

Acknowledgments, 2014

The words of gratitude from twenty years ago remain as true today as they were then, a testament to the enduring circle of support that family, colleagues, and friends offer, support that allows me to continue doing work that matters. Humbly, I thank everyone involved in publishing this revised and expanded edition of Canícula: at the University of New Mexico Press, Elise McHugh, Maya Allen-Gallegos, Felicia Cedillos, and the entire team; at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Sarah Czech; at home, Elvia E. Niebla, and most especially my sister Elsa C. Ruiz for her incredible work in locating the photographs and for always being there for me. ¡Gracias!

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, 2014

Acknowledgments, 1994

I acknowledge all who helped make this project happen. I thank Eloísa Ramón García, Florentino Cantú Vargas, and Virginia Ramón Cantú for the stories and the photographs. I also thank Elsa Ruiz, Sandra Cisneros, Tey Diana Rebolledo, Ellie Hernández, Anne Wallace, Andrea Otañez, and Barbara Guth for their support and encouragement. My gratitude to Elvia Niebla for the use of her laptop and to Ana Castillo for the use of her Santuario. To everyone who was there for me, who inspired, listened, shared, and in innumerable ways touched my life, I offer my sincere gratitude. Finally, and always, I acknowledge the Creator, the Universe in all its manifestations that guides my every step. ¡Gracias!

WASHINGTON, DC, 1994

Lo que bien se aprende, no se olvida / Lessons well-learned are not forgotten

Introduction to the Updated Edition

In 1995, when I held the first copy of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, I shed a few tears. The same way a precious heirloom takes us back to our antepasados and forward to our herederos, my beautiful, white hardcover edition touched my past and my future; I wept again reading certain stories remembering Bueli, Tino, Tía Chita, and others who had passed, along with those who had touched my life and gone on to other cities, other lives. During the first public readings that year, my voice cracked; I was unsure of whether to proceed lest I break down crying. But with time I could read Tino or Comadres without the fear of tears. It has been twenty years, years that have gone by swiftly, a day, a week, a year at a time. I have learned much; I have gained and lost much. Such is the give and take, the to and fro of life, el vaivén de la vida.

When I revisited the manuscript in preparation for this new edition, I wept and laughed and relived moments just as I had twenty years ago. I was especially struck by how many of the people in the book have passed on: Papi, Tía Licha, Tía Luz, other uncles, aunts, vecinas y vecinos, las comadres, classmates—all who left an indelible mark on me, adding to the intricate web of relations we all weave with our lives. I have updated their names and no longer use pseudonyms for them. I learned many lessons from these incredible people who touched my life; I honor their memory. ¡Qué en paz descansen!

Yes, I shed tears mourning the losses, but I also wept for the past, that irrevocable and induplicable past we have all inhabited. As I write these words in Kansas City, I dwell on the last twenty years and marvel at the many ways that my librito has changed me and my life. I collapse time and see myself as a fifteen-year-old—shy and resplendent in my quinceañera dress with my father at my side, surrounded by friends, family, and siblings. I see the many images that didn’t make it into the manuscript: I am the four-year-old, older sister at the studio making sure her little brother sits still for his birthday photo. I am the high school senior wearing a cap and gown, ready to conquer the world. Canícula changed my life, in a way similar to how walking the Camino de Santiago in the winter of 2010–2011 changed me forever. These change points are watershed moments when the world shifts and we are no longer who we were, no longer able to remain in the same space or have the same attitudes. Before Canícula, I would say: I am a teacher who writes. Over the course of the last twenty years, I have come to call myself a writer who teaches—a subtle but significant shift. More subtle changes, deeper and more significant, have not ceased. And all because in the summer of 1993 I decided I would not teach both summer sessions and took time off to write. The lesson? An old one that bears repeating: I must trust the process, allow the energy to flow and go with it. Allow my desires to become actions that lead me to my destino.

Decisions

When I submitted the original manuscript to the University of New Mexico Press in 1994, I was limited to twenty-three photos, and I also decided not to include certain pieces for various reasons. As I worked on this new edition and had the chance to add pieces and photos, the process became more complicated, for the book as it was constituted my vision and my choices of twenty years ago. Twenty years later, I again had to make decisions and select photos and pieces to include while ensuring that the integrity of the original remained. I culled from literally hundreds of photos that my sister Elsa—the keeper of the family photos—scanned and shipped to me from San Antonio to Kansas City. I debated with myself, even asked my Facebook friends about one particular image, and ultimately decided what to include.

It was not easy. I wrote the additional pieces and selected the photographs in the midst of dealing with the painful and depressing state of affairs in our country in the summer of 2014 (the tens of thousands of children, mostly from Central America, detained at the border, the shooting of innocent black men by police, the senseless violence against children and women); my usual academic tasks of teaching, committee work, advising, and writing letters of recommendation; and personal writing projects, such as finishing a manuscript with Inés Hernández-Ávila, working on various publication projects, and seeing to my latest edited collection (Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson’s Art of Dissidence and Dreams)—not to mention walking my fourth half marathon and all the while trying to remain balanced in mind, body, and spirit. Revisiting the manuscript was not an easy task; nonetheless it was a rewarding one. The process was entirely different from the process of writing the original pieces in Canícula. I did not have the luxury of uninterrupted time to delve deeply into the memories or to consult with anyone. But it was as gratifying as writing the manuscript was twenty years ago.

In 2010, thanks to the incredible work of many friends and family members, Canícula celebrated a quinceañera at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio. Planned like a traditional quinceañera, the celebration included the requisite elements: padrinos and madrinas for things such as invitations, music, flowers, cake (Benjamin Alire Sáenz was the padrino), and food (Cynthia Pérez and her crew served a delicious Mexican buffet). I truly felt blessed to have my family—including my prima Corito from Dallas—friends, and colleagues celebrate my librito’s coming of age, as it were. It was a huge success, and I was humbled by the event and the generosity of so many people in my life. But one thing was missing. I had approached the University of New Mexico Press about publishing a fifteenth anniversary edition, but the Press was going through rough times and it was not to be. So I tucked the idea away, but in 2014 I began discussions with Elise McHugh, an editor at the Press, about the possibility of a twentieth anniversary edition; she was amenable and suggested that I add a few more pieces and a few more photographs. I loved the idea of being able to go back to the outtakes and see if I could fit them in, and I was excited about the opportunity to revisit the manuscript and add photographs and perhaps write a few new pieces.

I never imagined that I would have a problem finding the unused pieces that I had written in the summer of 1993. But I did—huge problems! The old floppies (remember those?) with the original files were gone. I wrote the original book on a rented PC while I lived in Ana Castillo’s house in Old Town in Albuquerque for five weeks in the summer of 1993, so I didn’t have the files on a hard drive. I didn’t keep an external drive, we didn’t have the cloud or Dropbox, nor did we have flash drives, so I stored the file on a floppy disk that apparently disappeared due to my many moves. My archives at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) were not yet sorted and ready for consultation, but Julianna Barrera-Gómez in special collections did what she could and tried to locate the photographs and the manuscript files, to no avail. There was no other way: I had to re-create the pieces from what I remembered after more than twenty years! So I wrote new pieces during the summer and fall of 2014.

I also had trouble finding the original twenty-three photographs. I searched everywhere and again could not locate them. But most of them miraculously appeared in my sister Elsa’s boxes and boxes of photographs, so only a couple that were in the original edition are missing. I also added some new photos. For example, Lola’s Wedding originally included a photograph of Mami and Papi; that photograph is nowhere to be found, so instead I included the group photo outside the church. China Poblana Two had included a now-missing photograph of Mami, so I wrote a new piece, China Poblana Three, and included a new photograph.

Again, just as I did twenty years ago, I agonized over which photographs or documents to include. I chose not to include my safety patrol certificate—signed by Laredo mayor Albert Martin, no less! But I did include the cover of Tía Piedad’s book. I didn’t include my quinceañera invitation, but I did include a snapshot of the event along with a new piece. All in all, the decisions, difficult as they may have been, allowed me to reflect on the ways photographs are indeed memento mori, as Susan Sontag wrote. Sitting at my desk in Kansas City, I could feel the presence of those who were in the photographs, revisit the emotions and feelings of the time when they were taken, and shed tears once again, remembering.

Gifts and Lessons

Canícula has brought me many gifts in the last twenty years; it has taught me many lessons, too. It truly has been the gift that keeps on giving, for which I am eternally grateful and humbled. The first royalty check allowed me to buy a dining room table! It remains one of my prized possessions. The financial gains have not been many, but the steady stream of checks over the years has allowed me to buy things I would probably not have bought for myself otherwise—a fancy Mexican leather purse, a comfy chair for my bedroom where I can snuggle in to grade papers, and other such items.

An added gift has been the writing that it has inspired. First, I am often asked about the other two books in the trilogy—Papeles de mujer and Cabañuelas. The former remains incomplete. Written entirely in Spanish and set in the early part of the twentieth century in Omaha and in Laredo,