Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros
Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros
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Caramelo

Author: Sandra Cisneros

Narrator: Sandra Cisneros

Unabridged: 16 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/12/2019

Synopsis

Lala Reyes' grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala's possession. The novel opens with the Reyes' annual car trip—a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels—from Chicago to "the other side," Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family's stories, separating the truth from the "healthy lies" that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the "Paris of the New World" to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties—and finally, to Lala's own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas.Caramelo is a vital, wise, romantic tale of homelands, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Vivid, funny, intimate, historical, it is a brilliant work destined to become a classic: a major new novel from one of our country's most beloved storytellers.

About Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street, and her subsequent short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions, which Cisneros attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Oscar on February 12, 2025

Loved it!......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on June 10, 2007

Through the main storyteller Celaya, Cisneros has created an epic Chicana novel that deals with issues of laguage, class, race, gender, family, and being on the border of two cultures. She also brings into consideration the issue of truth-telling versus story-telling. Are they mutually exclusive? If......more

Goodreads review by E on October 11, 2007

This book was definitely worthwhile, but Cisneros seems to have been a bit overwhelmed by the task of composing an entire novel. She has many, many gorgeous lines strewn about the book tied to swift dialogue and gripping mini-stories, interrupted by simply cute moments, but the plot and her point ar......more

Goodreads review by Lauren on March 17, 2013

I really loved this book, and I was completely surprised that I did. When I'm handed a book and the summary from the person giving it to me is prefaced by "well, it's really slow at first...", let's just say I don't have high expectations. I can be a lazy reader, but this book was completely worth t......more

Quotes

“Spellbinding…A richly satisfying novel.”

People

“Cisneros is such an imaginative storyteller…Caramelo engages in a kind of playfulness that is utterly bewitching.”

Entertainment Weekly

“A joyful, fizzy American novel…Soulful, sophisticated and skeptical, full of great one-liners, it is one of those novels that blithely leap across the border between literary and popular fiction.”

New York Times Book Review

“Cisneros is a writer for all people. This is a novel of families, home life and finding yourself in the world’s greater landscape.” 

USA Today

“All the energy of a riotous family fiesta…Cisneros is undeniably at her peak.”

Washington Post

“Like Eduardo Galeano, John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, Cisneros writes along the borders where the novel and social history intersect. In this lovingly told and poetic novel, she uses the storytelling art to give the voiceless ones a voice, and to find the border to the past, imbuing the struggles of her family and her countries with the richness of myth.”

Los Angeles Times

“A wonderful book…evoking life’s absurdity and possibility, tragedy and transcendence…Combines the thematic richness of the most ambitious literature with the delight in character and plot of the most engrossing page-turner.”

Chicago Sun-Times

“A glorious book, Caramelo is crowded with the souvenirs and memories of the dramas of everyday life…like an oversized family album, intimate as well as universal.”

Philadelphia Inquirer

“The world of the twentieth-century Mexican family, and of the Reyeses in particular, is as complicated, timeless, and satisfying as our own family stories.”

Amazon.com, editorial review

“The author’s gorgeous prose, on-a-dime turns of phrase, and sumptuous scene-setting make this an unforgettable read.”

Booklist (starred review)

Awards

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