Scan barcode
A review by idleutopia_reads
Before by Carmen Boullosa
3.0
“I only have memories and what I imagine I might have experienced between the memories…. Only here can I weave my story with such pleasure, without the memories breaking off when summoned, because only their pleasure takes place.”
There is so much innocence in this part ghost story/part coming of age book called Before by Carmen Boullosa. To be honest, I have no idea what I read so why don’t we fumble along until the story makes sense. We’re visiting a woman who is visiting the landscape of her past to revisit an old fear that has haunted her since childhood. She had two older sisters who she was closed to but suddenly they grew up and she was no longer part of her circle. She is bullied at school, made to experience some pretty traumatic events, she calls her mother by her first name “Esther” and is proud of the artist her mother is.
There also seem to be steps that she hears a night that appear to only haunt her. She tries to stave off these ghosts by building a protective white pebble circle that gets destroyed every morning by her maid but is rebuilt by her every night until the stones get thrown away.
I think that with many Mexican women writers I have read the idea of being a woman in patriarchal macho society takes center stage. We witness a mother who is criticized for seemingly putting her art before her daughters, including being chastised by her own daughter who won’t call her Mom, there is a preoccupation with adopting a role that comes with a girl becoming a woman and the roles that are imposed or readily accepted once that event happens, how it can ostracize a girl that isn’t part of this club yet, the idea of innocence in the exploration of other bodies surrounding you, the idea of wanting to assert a self when there is a domineering force towering over your decisions, even when men rarely make it into the story, their force is still felt and oppresses.
As we follow our protagonist throughout her visit to the past, to her old fear, we begin to wonder if she was right to fear the fall into womanhood, the implications that comes with this new stage of life and dealing with grief by pretending to be dead to the world surrounding her and refusing to acknowledge her mother in her recounting of her story. All in the name of protecting her innocence from a horrible truth we get to witness in the end. Does any of this make sense?
I have no clue but the writing! I seriously couldn’t help but follow along. I wanted to know what this fear was, what the world she grew up in contained, the fears of a girl becoming a woman, how that fear turns into ghosts attacking her and the world around her. Looking back, I can remember a protection in being a girl that I knew would be gone once I became a woman, there are certain expectations placed on us that we know are coming and seem to haunt us as we see the inevitable future ahead of us. I think when we look at this story in this frame we can’t help what admire what Boullosa has done. Thanks for coming along this journey with me. It seems I did finally know what this story was about and it is utterly brilliant.
There is so much innocence in this part ghost story/part coming of age book called Before by Carmen Boullosa. To be honest, I have no idea what I read so why don’t we fumble along until the story makes sense. We’re visiting a woman who is visiting the landscape of her past to revisit an old fear that has haunted her since childhood. She had two older sisters who she was closed to but suddenly they grew up and she was no longer part of her circle. She is bullied at school, made to experience some pretty traumatic events, she calls her mother by her first name “Esther” and is proud of the artist her mother is.
There also seem to be steps that she hears a night that appear to only haunt her. She tries to stave off these ghosts by building a protective white pebble circle that gets destroyed every morning by her maid but is rebuilt by her every night until the stones get thrown away.
I think that with many Mexican women writers I have read the idea of being a woman in patriarchal macho society takes center stage. We witness a mother who is criticized for seemingly putting her art before her daughters, including being chastised by her own daughter who won’t call her Mom, there is a preoccupation with adopting a role that comes with a girl becoming a woman and the roles that are imposed or readily accepted once that event happens, how it can ostracize a girl that isn’t part of this club yet, the idea of innocence in the exploration of other bodies surrounding you, the idea of wanting to assert a self when there is a domineering force towering over your decisions, even when men rarely make it into the story, their force is still felt and oppresses.
As we follow our protagonist throughout her visit to the past, to her old fear, we begin to wonder if she was right to fear the fall into womanhood, the implications that comes with this new stage of life and dealing with grief by pretending to be dead to the world surrounding her and refusing to acknowledge her mother in her recounting of her story. All in the name of protecting her innocence from a horrible truth we get to witness in the end. Does any of this make sense?
I have no clue but the writing! I seriously couldn’t help but follow along. I wanted to know what this fear was, what the world she grew up in contained, the fears of a girl becoming a woman, how that fear turns into ghosts attacking her and the world around her. Looking back, I can remember a protection in being a girl that I knew would be gone once I became a woman, there are certain expectations placed on us that we know are coming and seem to haunt us as we see the inevitable future ahead of us. I think when we look at this story in this frame we can’t help what admire what Boullosa has done. Thanks for coming along this journey with me. It seems I did finally know what this story was about and it is utterly brilliant.