Synopses & Reviews
Every year, Ceyala "Lala" Reyes’s family — aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, and Lala’s six older brothers — packs up three cars and, in a wild ride, drive from Chicago to the Little Grandfather and Awful Grandmother’s house in Mexico City for the summer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothers and to understand her place on this side of the border and that, Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she starts telling the Awful Grandmother’s life story, seeking clues to how she got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating. Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwind exploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished rebozo, or shawl, that has been passed down through generations of Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history, family, and love.
Review
"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
Review
"All the energy of a riotous family fiesta....Cisneros is undeniably at her peak.” The Washington Post
Review
"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." The Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
"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
About the Author
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, which has been translated into more than 20 languages, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award, the American Book Award, and the Thomas Wolfe Prize, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of two novels, The House on Mango Street and Caramelo; a collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek; two books of poetry, My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman; a children’s book, Hairs/Pelitos; a selected anthology of her own work, Vintage Cisneros; and Have You Seen Marie?, a fable for adults illustrated by Ester Hernández. She is the founder of the Macondo Foundation, an association of writers united to serve underserved communities. Find her online at www.sandracisneros.com.