Discover Canícula: Snapshots Of A Girlhood En La Frontera Drafted By Norma E. Cantú Published As Paper Edition

fascinating novel in vignettes about truth and photography i'm not sure i would have liked it as much had i not grown up in san antonio, tx.
i thought her glimpses of life on the border were fascinating and heartfelt, but thought it strained under the format and jumped around too much.
also for class This book was so beautifully written and I think it has become one of my favorite books now, Its a personalized ethnography and its told through vignettes that are accompanied by old family pictures from Norma Cantus own albums,

I cant describe how much I loved this book, its so personal but it felt like I was reading about my own familys history and Im so thankful it was assigned to me in class.
Cantu writes with an undeniable poetry, weaving an intricate web of stories about life on the borderlands between the US and Mexico.
“And someone of us never leave, and some of us never come back, Some of us keep coming back, Some of us love and some of us hate, some of us both love and hate our borderlands”, Norma Cantu, Canicula.

Canicula is a book that is hard to define, It is that unique. It feels like sitting in the living room with a grandma or an elderly aunt going through pictures of people you don't know of relatives and friends who passed away before you were born.
In Canicula, Norma Cantu uses pictures to share snips and bits of a girl's story growing up in the Southern border where Mexico meets Texas.
Her family has lived in both sides of the border for generations, It is in English but it is peppered with Spanish words that reading it I wonder if a nonSpanish speaker, devoid of any background on Mexican culture would be able to understand it.


. Like pictures pulled from a dusty shoebox, the story does not follow chronologically nor has a center, It just exists as a collection of memories, I found the style very interesting, Mesmerizing. Creative and unique. I also found the traditions and culture depicted, nostalgic, It reminded me of my paternal grandmother and the conversations she would have, sitting in her porch, sipping a regular coke,


It is an interesting read, It is worth reading, if anything, for its unique style, However, if you like plotdriven stories or character development, stay away, This might no be for you, La frontera is a mystical region influenced by an embrace of cultures, the lapses of time, the economy of two countries, and the growth that comes with opportunities.
To explain it is difficult because so much is lost in the intent, trying to translate a communitys language with the vocabulary that divides our accent.
But that doesnt stop us from trying to share our Mexican/American borderland because our culture is about extending a hand to the world.


Dr. Cantus snapshots take us back to a youth where traditions are molded and family is an expected backbone, Her stories are shared, rather than told, and the history tejanos have experienced are documented without boundaries,

Not exactly fictional or autobiographical, Canicula immerses readers into a familys timeline that spans generations and captures the essence of life bonds.
Made it a little over halfway before abandoning, While the vignettes were charming and colorful, there was no sense of this ever unfolding into a larger story, I liked this a lot more then I thought I was going to, I was surprised because the whole premise of the book is that it's a memoir, but it's also fictional, The author is taking pictures out of a shoe box in no particular order and telling autobiographical accounts of what happened but it's also fictional as well.
I've never had a good stream of consciousness experience until now you would call it that wouldn't you, I think it's because San Antonio is mentioned so many times and I'm very close to the border culture that I'm always more interested in hearing about it.
It's not a part of my individual culture but it's in the culture of San Antonio, and that's why I think it's so easy to connect to.
It was interesting how life and death were so closely interconnected, The book wasn't traditionally organized, but the stories that were chosen to be near each other was smartly executed, I'll degonirely give a book like this another try, The author makes a point of describing this as fiction in her introduction, but in spite of that, it seems to be a memoir.
She was Mexicanborn, and grew up in Southern Texas near the Mexican border, In no particular order, she gives "snapshots" of her life and family growing up there, sometimes accompanied by actual photos, Cantú's writing style is a simple, casual, conversational one, and by the end of the small book, the reader feels she knows the author and her family well.
From the perspective of craft, I'd say she is in development,
The concept of writing from a springboard of photographs is interesting but doesn't quite work, Cantu too often tells about the images rather than shows the sensory value of the moment from which the image was borrowed.

She hits the reader with a barrage of names for which we have no context, No chronological order and the disclaimer in the intro states that the flash pieces are fiction and nonfictionboth,
I felt like I was in a strangers house beings forced to enjoy every family shoe box of photos, And there are hundreds of them,
Some of the shorts were quite compelling, but they were just thatshortsand far too many of them for one book, At times they fit together and at other times they felt disjointed and faded, this book is both beautiful and creative, through her use of snapshots and vignette styled stories, cantu recants her childhood creating a realistic realistic fiction, this book is worth

your time and exploration, Interesting writing choice taking a random group of photographs and telling a bit of the story behind each one, The book lacks cohesion and a grand narrative, but a novel attempt by Cantú to force the reader to create their own version of the grand narrative.
I could not make it to the end, It was an interesting concept for the author to take others' photographs and write a story based off them but it didn't capture my attention for too long.
It was good for the most part but I got over it pretty fast and didnt care to finish, The concept of this book is clever, and it certainly made me miss South Texas, I have no real complaints about this book, but I also don't necessarily have anything too glowing to say about this fictionalized account of Cantú's family and childhood.
Canicula the dog days a particularly intense part of the summer when most cotton is harvested in South Texas, In Norma Cantu's fictionalized memoir of Laredo in thes,s, and earlys, it also represents a time between childhood and an as yet unknown adulthood.
Actual snapshots and the author's recreated memories allow readers to experience the pivotal events of this world births, deaths, injuries, fiestas, rites of passage.
This popular book won thePremio Aztlan and is now available in paperback for the first time, .