Dreaming with Mariposas

By Sonia Gutiérrez and Matthew Revert

Sonia Gutiérrez's Dreaming with Mariposas, written in a Tomás Rivera and Sandra Cisneros bildungsroman vignette style, recounts the story of the Martínez family as told through the eyes of transfronteriza/transboundary Sofía Martínez, "Chofi," Francisco and Helena's daughter, as well as multiple narrators, emulating oral tradition. The novel emb

• Language: English
• Publisher: FlowerSong Press
• Release date: Dec 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781953447074

Sonia Gutiérrez

Sonia Gutiérrez is the author of Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña (Olmeca Press, 2013) and the coeditor of The Writer's Response (Cengage Learning, 2016). She teaches critical thinking and writing, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, and multicultural studies. Her second bilingual poetry collection, Paper Birds / Pájaros de papel, is seeking publication. She is currently working on Sana Sana Colita de Rana, a poetry collection, and moderating Poets Responding. She lives in California with her family and cat, Arlito. To learn more about Sonia Gutiérrez and her work, visit www.soniagutierrez.com.

Book preview

Advance Praise for

DREAMING WITH MARIPOSAS

Sonia Gutiérrez masterfully evokes the voices of the Chicano forebearers in her debut novel, Dreaming with Mariposas. The text reads like a new song; in it you can hear the whimsical humor and self-aware candor of Sandra Cisneros, as well as the iconic vignette voice and style of the great Tomás Rivera, made anew for the contemporary audience. Gutiérrez gracefully navigates difficult themes that are relevant to today’s reader, such as immigration, sexism and the search for destiny. Dreaming with Mariposas contains all the hallmarks of a new classic. I just love it!

—Gris Muñoz, author of Coatlicue Girl

Sonia Gutiérrez invites us to dream in her world made up of literary skill as we follow the mundane and the miraculous ways migrant families exist in the United States. She brilliantly humanizes these experiences as we get to know Sofía and Paloma; two brown girls growing up in North County San Diego. Gutiérrez provides a window of opportunity to understand transregional knowledge of border life between San Diego and Tijuana through a sharp lens of race, gender, class, and doctors that live in another country. She masters the use of bilingual phrases and cultural cues of Mexican and Indigenous systems of being: limpias, paletas, bikas, domingo, manzanilla, yerbitas y santos, el burro, piñatas, cebollita y cilantro, tacos y carne asada, guayaba trees, el mercadito, cholo boys, la chota y la migra. We understand the cultural complexity that Sofía and Paloma navigate as they imagine dream worlds of college aspirations. I am confident my students will revel in its familiarity and newcomers will fall in love. Without dreams, butterflies, and writers like Gutiérrez, our world would not be beautiful and delicious. These human connections are all sacred, and without them, we would not exist y punto.

—Angélica M. Yañez, Ph.D., editor of United States History from a Chicano Perspective

Sonia Gutiérrez captures dreams and memories with Dreaming with Mariposas, her latest literary collection. The poignancy of Dreaming wraps the reader in memories and wishes, and dreams, deferred and fulfilled. A Family of Butterflies forever traveling through dreams and reality.

—Kim McMillon, Ph.D., Black Arts Movement scholar and playwright

Sonia Gutiérrez reminds one of our elders offering us blessings in our youth. These vignettes are like the energy that connects the synapses in our body and the emotions infused in them bring warmth to the soul; and as fleeting as a soft cool breeze, they offer a fragrance that is remembered, etched and made tangible. The memories and narratives told are unrelenting and nourishing, they provide a vulnerability in their confessions.

—Gibrán Güido, coeditor of Queer in Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness

Dreaming with Mariposas is a powerful telling of family cuentos. American stories that need to be read and felt down to the core of them. From the very first vignette we are compelled to continue listening to the dreams and struggles of the parents and children featured in these pages who are from our America—our Turtle Island. How being formed from humble but powerful beginnings, like the corn, beans, squash, and nopales, which they eat—and being of simple down to earth sustenance is powerful; because they, like these plants, are seeds that can flourish because of life visions which are seemingly impossible aspirations. The main characters grow their dreams from the earth, hard work, and above all hope. Dreaming with Mariposas is full of stories we all can relate to because it shows that despite all odds a people can and do reach their goals. In these poignant stories no one is left behind because as long as their dream-stories are told and retold all are remembered and we learn through their lives and struggles.

—Odilia Galván Rodríguez, author of The Color of Light and coeditor of the award-winning anthology, Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice

FlowerSong Press

Copyright © 2020 by Sonia Gutiérrez

ISBN: 978-1-953447-99-9

ISBN: 978-1-953447-07-4 (e-book)

Library of Congress Number: 2020952189

Published by FlowerSong Press

in the United States of America.

www.flowersongpress.com

Cover art by Jorge Garza Qetza

Set in Adobe Garamond Pro

Typeset by Matthew Revert

www.matthewrevert.com

No part of this book may be reproduced without

written permission from the publisher.

All inquiries and permission requests should be

addressed to the Publisher.

ALSO BY SONIA GUTIÉRREZ

Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña

The Writer’s Response, 6th edition (coeditor)

For my firstborn and secondborn,

Quetzal and Paulina Xitlalli

Mendoza Gutiérrez—the power of two

Contents

Dreams

Up, Up, and Away!

Rocky Girls

Knuckles, Magic Rings, and Brushes

Things Poncho Said

Paloma’s Last Confession

The Prayer

The Grown Man

Dollars Did Grow on Trees

Mother and Her Scissors

The Mango and Mambo Days

The Speech Therapist

Laurel Trees and a Purple Building

El Huevo

Our Doctor Who Lived in Another Country

Launderland

Our Dream Home

The Guayaba Tree

Las Muy Muy

The Belt

San Marcos, Twelve

The Boy Who Moved Far, Far Away

La Migra Chasing My Mind

Put Your Hands over Your Head

Make Believe

Playing with Fire

Paper Boys Were a Sin

Los Chores

The Leg

". . . Good luck, Sofia"

A Doorway of Her Own

The Dream Story

Stories Tía Alicia Told Us

Lo bonito no te quita lo pendejo . . .

The Music’s Heartbeat

Alicia in the Company of Men

El Diablo

Peacocks and Snakes Too

Parrot in the Oven

The S and M Fly

Go back to Mexico!

NOW HIRING

The Leftovers

The Wind in My Hair

Teachers and Cops

Emiliano Martínez or Any Other Name

Tomasito

Big Bad Wolves

Cholas Falsas

Locked Up in the Mind

Green Dollar Dreams

La Tanda

In the Place of Dreams

Dreaming with Aurora

On Top of a Treetop

Helena’s Frijoles de la Olla

La Tamalera

Kissing Dreams from a Distance

Something Sacred

El Borracho

Sofía, ¿qué soñaste?

A Woman’s Body

The Story of the First Year

The Night Paco Almost Had a Heart Attack

Renegades

In the Place of Books

By Sofía Martínez

Dream Makers

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Afterword

I would like to see all of the people together. And then, if I had great big arms, I could embrace them all. I wish I could talk to all of them again, but all of them together. But that, only in a dream. I like it right here because I can think about anything I please. Only by being alone can you bring everybody together.

—Tomás Rivera, . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra /

. . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him

In the meantime, in my writing as well as in that of other Chicanas and other women, there is a necessary phase of dealing with the ghosts and voices most urgently haunting us, day by day.

—Sandra Cisneros, "Ghosts and Voices:

Writing from Obsession"

Dreams

Beneath a thick blanket of smog, Dad and Mom were two butterflies taking flight. In Los Ángeles, disoriented by the honking of engines running, they navigated the busyness of city streets and dodged oncoming cars.

At home, in our one-bedroom duplex, Mom insisted our words were fluttering dreams. They began when our eyes turned off all the lights, and our imagination switched ON and visited the place of dreams. From the kitchen, Dad called it a night, Buenas noches, Palomita y Chofi. Mom reminded my sister, Paloma, and me, Dreams—the ones you want to come true—share them out loud with your eyes wide open, so your dreams can guide you through the world of the living. Mom whispered sweet wishes to our ears, Que sueñen con las maripositas, made the sign of the cross, and tucked us into our twin bed as we flew to Dreamland, the place of our ancestors.

In the morning, we shared with each other our good dreams and repeated these dream stories to ourselves over and over, so we wouldn’t forget. And one day, as Dad and Mom assured, our dreams would travel to us, or we would travel to them, and before we knew it, we’d be laughing, running, sitting, and even flying in our dreams.

There were other types of dreams too though—more like living nightmares—that made us wail inside. I learned those stories, even though Mom and Dad said to be polite and not to share them out loud, they had to be told. We needed to train our tongues, so they wouldn’t be afraid to speak for us.

Or else it would happen again and again.

But no one wanted to hear those dream stories because people wanted to hide them in brown cardboard boxes, seal them with red masking tape, and hide them in their closets. When Paloma and I heard these stories come out and whimper with broken wings, tears ran down our chubby cheeks. And like our parents, we dreamed of better tomorrows for them and for us.

Up, Up, and Away!

We were on a plane catching up to Dad who was working in another state, and Paloma was scared holding onto Mom’s arm. I wasn’t. I looked out the window at the little world below me. I was up, up, and away leaving Los Ángeles like Superman, my superhero, who looked like my Uncle Miguel, Dad’s dead cousin, who’s here but not here, the one with a curl on the side of his forehead. We were flying on a plane—a real plane—not like Wonder Woman’s invisible jet on our way to see Dad to a place called Idaho, where he was milking cows, and there were rows and rows of potato fields waiting for someone like my mom. Dad told Mom over the telephone a packing company in Boise was looking for workers who wouldn’t take days off the potato line.

In Idaho, during the summer, Mother ran over snakes with her car. She made mushy guacamole and salsa out of snakes until they were really, really dead. In the winter, I know you’re not going to believe me, but I’ll tell you anyways. Paloma and I used to walk barefooted in the snow. Really. I swear. Idaho, that’s where people spoke funny cowboy Spanish and asked, "¿A poco estas son tus dos huercas?"

One day, I was playing on the porch making a pot of pozole with rocks, water, and dirt when the push of a broom sent me flying off the porch. And I fell like you see in cartoons. Like when the Road Runner pushes Wile E. Coyote off a cliff. There was a rusty nail sticking out of the wall, and it tore my arm open like an old sock. See this scar—it’s shiny and feels soft. Touch it—I can’t feel a thing. Mom didn’t know what to do because we were home alone. I didn’t cry until I saw the blood dripping on my Levi’s overalls. Mom says I could have died or lost an arm because we only had one family car, and Dad had driven to the dairy to work that morning. I’ll tell you what really happened: Uncle El Gordo’s wife pushed me off the stairs because she thought her husband—our uncle—who wasn’t really our real uncle, spoiled us. She was jealous.

I heard Mom say Uncle El Gordo had a pre-mo-ni-tion, a co-ra-zo-na-da or an in-tui-tion from the pit of his big fat belly, heart, mind, and soul—a living dream—a force we can’t see told him to return home. And he did. By that time, Mom had wrapped my little arm, and Uncle El Gordo rushed us to the nearest hospital about forty-five minutes away. I was lucky I didn’t lose my right arm, or else I’d be walking around left-handed like this.

Weeks later, when my scar got itchy, a doctor needed to check my wound and to pull out my stitches, Mom told her boss she needed to take me to the doctor for a checkup. Her boss warned, Helena, if you clock out, you’re fired! When he talked to her with a screaming mean voice, my mom raised her right eyebrow and yelled, Me ponch! as she clocked out and left without her boss’s permission.

Months later, Dad said, "Helena,