“I believe in memory not as a place of arrival, but as a point of departure—a catapult throwing you into present times, allowing you to imagine the future instead of accepting it.”
- Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire
Written works in the genres of autobiography, memoir, autobiographical narrative, and even historical narrations (like Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire), often commence with an introductory clause that distinguishes the author’s memory from the reality of the locations and events portrayed in the text. This distinction, while working to inform the readers on the extent to which they can trust the content of the text to be accurate and truthful, seems to imply that not only is memory different from reality, but that it is simply an interpretation of an arguably indeterminable ‘truth.’ Jaquira Díaz, in her memoir, Ordinary Girls, explains in the paritext of the book, “This is a work of nonfiction. But it is also a work of memory” (Díaz).1 The implications of both sentences here are abruptly separated by the insertion of a weighty, “But,” highlighting the paradox between them. The statement that her story is ‘nonfiction’ implies that it recounts real-life and truthful events. Yet the immediate caveat that follows seems to undermine both the author’s and the reader’s notion of what ‘truth’ actually is with respect to the retelling of such events. This observation is not a critique—it is simply a means of accentuating the profound distinction, and vast separation that lies between memory and reality both in literature, and in the widely-recognized, collective human experience.
In a review of Natalia Sylvester’s Everyone Knows You Go Home, ire’ne lara silva observes that “Life on the borderlands—between Texas and Mexico, news reports and real life, history and memory, the living and the dead—creates an immersive world for exploring the mysteries that we all are to each other” (Sylvester, “Advance Praise”). The point I wish to emphasize is silva’s observation of “history and memory” as a distinguishing feature of life along the border. Just as Texas and Mexico are separated by a divide; as news reports and real-life are separated by perceptions; and as life and death are separated by an unsearchable threshold; history and memory, too, are separated by a filter of personal experience. And memory, as Plato proposed, can be best described as merely an impression of reality, history, and truth; which makes its assimilative mark on a metaphorical wax tablet of the soul and mind.2 Impressions, as the name suggests, are not full, clear pictures of reality, but are merely likenesses of it, individually and diversely formed by passing through the predisposed filters of the human mind. In observing the whole of Sylvester’s novel, this divide between history (reality) and memory is ostensibly a central theme of the text. By assessing the many manifestations of memory throughout the novel—those made particularly evident by the text’s frame, plot, and narrational point of view—this observation becomes apparent. Although her book is admittedly a work of fiction, it is also a work of realism in which the characters grapple with this natural, realistic divide from the very first chapter, to the end, and even beyond as the story insinuates. It appears that by distinguishing history from memory in this manner, Sylvester reveals that memory can be both deceiving and enlightening, capable of binding as well as redeeming; but ultimately, that it is a necessary adjunct in the discovery of truth.
The Frame: Foreshadowing the Theme of Memory
In the epigraph commencing her novel, Sylvester quotes from Eduardo Galeano’s Days and Nights of Love and War. It reads, “My memory will retain what is worthwhile. My memory knows more about me than I do; it doesn’t lose what deserves to be saved” (Days 2-3). As epigraphs are employed a means of communicating textual themes, it is important to recognize the emphasis of this excerpt. As previously mentioned, the notion of memory plays a significant role in the story, and one of the major indications of the theme’s centrality is this pre-narrative invocation of Galeano’s work. In its original context, the excerpt is a response to a life of loss—the speaker reveals he lost his partner, Graciela; lost his home as a result of the split-up; lost his belongings on a journey; lost his way of life, adopting what he terms a “Gypsy life” (ibid. 2). After accepting his losses, deciding to leave them in the past, the speaker says, “I set out for the unknown, clean and unburdened” by what he calls, “things” (ibid. 3). It is after this statement that Sylvester’s epigraph excerpt appears—“My memory will retain what is worthwhile”—indicating that memory (observably both his own memory of the past, as well as others’ memory of him) is his most valuable commodity, the most important aspect of his life. Unlike the speaker’s inability to keep his material possessions safe, memory keeps the most precious items of life in stores that cannot be robbed or lost. And due to the collective nature of memory—the fact that it can be shared and informed by the diverse impressions of other people—reveals why memory, in this case knows more about the speaker than the speaker knows about himself.
Taking these observations and juxtaposing them to the story at hand, the speaker in Galeano’s text can be easily compared to Omar in Sylvester’s novel. Omar lost his wife, his family, his home, his reputation, his way of life, and ultimately ended up living a form of “Gypsy life,” so to speak, in his various habitations of prison, desert, and ultimately, the afterlife. He explains that traveling through his metaphysical realm to the physical, “seems to take an eternity while I’m gone, and passes in a flash once I’m here,” as if he simply floats through a world of mere consciousness until arriving at a time and place he cannot control, only to return and continue the cyclical process (Sylvester 27). His life mirrors that of Galeano’s speaker; and the message of Sylvester’s epigraph, in this manner, serves to foreshadow the very aspect of the plot that will ultimately lead to Omar’s redemption—and to that of the entire family. As memory is apparently a very important, redemptive theme of the book, the memory of Omar, specifically, as the evocation of the epigraph suggests, is the key subject of that theme.
The novel is framed primarily by the epigraph and the content of chapter 1, along with the content of the final chapter, which all point directly to the memory of Omar. Proceeding from the epigraph into Chapter 1, Omar is the subject of the very first sentence of the book, supporting the notion that his character is crucial to the entire novel: “They were married on the Day of the Dead […] which no one gave much thought to in all the months of planning, until the bride’s deceased father-in-law showed up in the car following the ceremony” (Sylvester 1). While “They” is the subject of the first clause, the second clause’s subject naturally receives more emphasis and attention because it is the center of the ‘shocking’ nature of the statement. In this sentence, the memory of Omar appears an equally prominent feature as the narrator explains, and further reveals throughout the chapter, that not only is Omar deceased—a spirit manifesting on Día de los Muertos, the day designated to commemorate the dead—but also that he has apparently been absent from the family’s lives for many years, and thus, inhabits nothing more than tainted memories in their hearts and minds. Martin’s elusive response to the presence of his father reveals the extent to which this is true in his own life: “Typical. Only someone so shameless would show up to a wedding uninvited;” and he resigns himself to his bitterness by answering his wife’s request to be properly introduced with, “I’m not talking to him” (2). In this moment, the narrator makes it very clear that the memory of Omar, from Martin’s perspective, is neither pleasant nor respected. And the audience is likely to sympathize with Martin, trusting his memory, and envisioning the many atrocities that could have occurred to cause such a breach between father and son. Yet, just a few pages later, the narrator complicates this understanding by undermining the alleged accuracy of Martin’s memory. When Isabel and Omar are alone later that evening, she prods him,
‘Why are you here, Omar?’ […]
‘Elda wouldn’t see me, so I came here.’ […]
‘What about Martin?’ Her patience was wearing thin.
‘I was surprised he saw me at all […] But then again it’s his wedding day, and I’m his father, even though—’
‘Even though you left when he was seven?’
‘Ah. What else has he told you?’
‘Enough to make it clear why he wouldn’t want you here’ (9-10).
After this exchange, Isabel desires “to prove she knew his family more than he thought she did,” and remembering an old story Martin shared with her about his childhood, asks; “Tell me about the time you played hide-and-seek, and he hid so well no one could find him for an hour” (10). This is a pivotal moment in the chapter, as well as in the book as a whole, foreshadowing again what is yet to come. Omar tells her the story, but it is nothing like what Martin recalled and relayed to her. Martin remembered the event as a moment of family fun, as Isabel explains, “It’s one of his first memories. He talks about it like it’s an early triumph” (11). But what Omar reveals is that the game of ‘hide-and-seek’ was merely a distraction and a method employed by Martin’s parents to keep him safe and hidden during a treacherous time of emergency. What this portion of the narrative accomplishes, then, is placing doubt into the minds of the readers as they come to recognize that singular memory can be deceptive; that it is not, in itself, historically accurate and truthful. For Isabel, it required the combination of two different impressions recalling the same moment to recognize that there may be something larger at work. Completing the frame, the final chapter of the novel depicts the memory of Eduardo—the nephew who knew and loved Omar very well—and reveals the truth of the story, reflecting again the epigraph, and its message that memory, both personal and collective, “retain[s] what is worthwhile” and leads to redemption.
The Plot and Narrational Point of View: A ‘Collective Memory,’ Indeed
Numerous Latine scholars have acknowledged ‘memory’ as a vital aspect for the life and history of the Latine community. Arguing for the implementation of expressive, ‘autohistoria’-esque genres into academic writing pedagogies, Victor Villanueva lists over ten such scholars, commenting that “all have written about the connections between narratives by people of color and the need to reclaim a memory, memory of an identity in formation and constant reformation, the need to reclaim a memory of an identity as formed through the generations” (Villanueva 12).3 What Villanueva depicts in this segment is the notion of an expansive collective memory that, when brought together, has the power to reclaim history, transforming the present and the future. It is for this reason that Eduardo Galeano wrote his historical trilogy, Memory of Fire—as a means of “rescuing the kidnapped memory of all America” (Memory i). And it is within the same vein that Carlos Manuel Salomon rationalizes, “local memory […] promotes cultural history” (Salomon 350). According to Salomon, memory and other forms of quasi-fictionalized storytelling are, for the Latine community, “essential tools of […] collective history. They are not tools indigenous to the Americas, nor are they exclusively Western; they are universal and significantly contribute to the telling of history” (ibid. 350). As Salomon deems this collective memory a “universal” tool for uncovering history, by applying this principle on a micro-level specifically to Sylvester’s novel, the collective memory between Omar and his family members, in the same manner, guides the characters and audience to a revelation of truth—transforming their present and their futures. This is the framework for Sylvester’s plot—the gradual revelation of truth over time through the memories of the characters interacting with the ‘memory’ (or rather, historical accounts) of an omniscient, third-person narrator.
More specifically, the plot centers on Isabel, pivoting around her life as it interacts with other characters and their memories of Omar. In this manner, she holds a unique position in the family as a ‘keeper’ of Omar’s memory, since no one else wishes to maintain it, and especially because she yearns to understand the true history of her in-law family. On the anniversary of his first apparition, Omar appears again to Isabel, expressing, “Do you know what keeps the dead from really dying, Isabel? It’s just memory. Longing. Being held in the hearts of our loved ones” (Sylvester 29). Because his family appears no longer to ‘long’ for him, nor ‘hold him in their hearts,’ he tells Isabel, “I’m starting to think the only thing bringing me here is you” (30). Indeed, as the story unfolds, she attempts to uncover pieces of Omar’s memory from each member of the family, to very little avail, and often resulting in silence or evasion from her unwilling ‘interviewees.’ Yet her attempts reveal the manner in which memory can inflict a form of bondage on its keepers if it is stifled and turned to bitterness. Martin refuses to share that hidden part of his life with his wife, causing unbearable tension between them; Elda cannot even hear the name ‘Omar’ without stopping and excusing herself; with Claudia, the subject proves so sensitive, Isabel thought she would lose their friendship.4 And given the conclusion of the story—that the memories offered by Omar and Eduardo, along with the intermittent excursions into the past with the omniscient narrator, create a picture of Omar that is very different than the family’s original perceptions, an arguably innocent one—this reveals how deceptive memory can be as well, when isolated and incomplete.
Thus, the role of the narrator is very significant as well. Omniscience and omnipresence are characteristics of a divine nature, which the narrator demonstrates by it’s all-knowing point of view. The narrator jumps between the past and the present, revealing glimpses into historically accurate moments of the family’s history, or rather memory, that none of the characters necessarily know or perceive from their singular impressions of the past. This nature of omniscience and omnipresence—the ability to traverse through time and space, memory and history—is reflective of two prominent mythological deities who are directly associated with remembrance. In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory, mother of the nine Muses, and one of the original titans who served in the foundation of the world. She is distinguished among the deities by possessing the unique ability “to know everything, past, present, and future,” providing mankind with reason, remembrance, and insight into the time to come—all facets of truth (Smith, “Myths”). In the underworld, drinking from the river Mnemosyne would enable spirits to remember all things, a gift equatable to everlasting life. Drinking from the antithetical river, Lethe (oblivion), would cause spirits to forget all things; and in ancient Greek culture, “forgetting the true order and origin of things is often tantamount to death” (ibid.). Thus, much like Omar’s description of memory being the only thing that “keeps the dead from really dying,” this ancient myth reveals a very similar understanding—that with complete, informed memory, there is redemption and renewed life (Sylvester 29). In this manner, the narrator in Sylvester’s novel possesses power equatable to that of Mnemosyne—omniscience, omnipresence, and ability to reveal redemptive truth.
Likewise, in Aztec mythology, Tezcatlipoca is the “supreme deity of the Late Postclassic Aztec pantheon,” often recognized as the god of memory (among other traits) for his ability to “mediate[s] materiality and invisibility with omniscience and omnipresence” (Saunders 1, 2). His omnipresence allows him to cross “spatial and mythical boundaries,” and abide where he pleases, such as in life or the afterlife, the present or the past (ibid. 2). His omniscience is represented by his possession of an “obsidian mirror,” which is “a metaphor for rulership and power […] with which he ‘knows everything’ and is able to see into the hearts of men” (ibid. 2-3). Again, the all-knowing power of this ‘god of memory,’ like that of Mnemosyne, is equatable to the power and actions evident in the narrator of Sylvester’s story, who crosses mythical and time-defying divides in order to reveal the true history of Omar and his family to the audience. In this manner, throughout the entirety of the book, the memories of Omar by himself and his family members—those which Isabel gradually gleans from them over time—are in constant communication with the memory (or historical accounts) of the narrator. They inform and contribute to one another, ultimately working to piece together a ‘collective memory’ from which the revelation of truth and redemption at the end of the story ensue.
The most powerful example of this communication appears during a pivotal moment of the book, between chapters twenty and twenty-one. Chapter twenty is one of the narrator’s glimpses into the past, and it details the moment in which Elda kills a man in self-defense during her northward journey through the borderlands. An important picture it provides is that after the height of the traumatic moment, in the midst of the haze due to her shock and adrenaline rush, the narrator reveals, “[Elda] felt Omar lift her away” (Sylvester 121). This statement underscores the nature of Omar’s character, which has been developing through the historical revelations thus far as a very honorable, loving one. Omar’s presence, his ostensible desire to protect Elda, and remove her from all that terrifies and harms, is insight into the truth of what happened between them. The chapter ends with the statement, “She knew […] that she had killed the man,” erasing any doubt as to what occurred in that instant, and giving the audience a side of the story they could never have imagined based on the singular memories of the other characters (121).
The story then transitions, in chapter twenty-one, to the present where Isabel again struggles with Martin in an attempt to uncover more truth about Omar’s history. She feels his reluctance as a lack of trust and intimacy. And as a result of her prodding they have this crucial exchange:
‘Is this how it’s always going to be? Everything ends up back at him?’
‘I don’t know. I just…that’s the problem. We’re supposed to know each other and share a life together, and there’s this huge part of your life that I know nothing about.’
‘Not huge. Seven years isn’t huge.’
‘You know that’s not all it is.’
‘You keep trying to make him mean more than he does.’
‘And what? I have no right to ask? I’m your wife. […] I don’t keep any secrets from you. Everything that is me is yours.’
[…]
‘He didn’t just leave, Isa. He went to prison for killing a guy. He’s no saint’ (125, emphasis added).
Here, Martin reluctantly reveals to Isabel the core of his memory of Omar, around which all of his other thoughts and memories of this father revolve—that he killed a man, that he is a murderer. Yet, because the preceding chapter details a historically accurate account, by the all-knowing narrational vision, of Elda murdering a man (and of Omar acting as a force of rescue and relief, ostensibly seeking to bear her burden), this new revelation from Martin’s memory communicates with the former chapter insinuating that Martin could have the story completely reversed. The insights from the chapters work together as the audience is then able to further piece together the truth from the collective memory that both accounts provide. This form of communication between the singular memory of the characters and the narrational memory permeates the novel. While it ultimately serves to create a collective memory through which the truth can be revealed, it also underscores the deception and bondage of stifled, incomplete, and bitter memory to which the characters are very clearly victim.
Yet just as memory can be deceiving and binding, as it is not in itself reality, but a mere impression of reality; it is moreover a force of enlightenment and redemption because “The stories, the places, and the traditions [of many impressions] all collude to spark collective memory” which, as evidenced by Sylvester’s story, is a necessary adjunct in the discovery of truth (Salomon 359). It is through this means that Martin is able to reconcile with his father by the end of the story, relying on the collective memory of others for his understanding of the truth:
‘Ever since Eduardo left, I’ve been thinking about all the questions I never asked him. All the things I assumed would be too hard for him to talk about.’ […]
‘I realized I never asked Eduardo about the good stuff, […] The memories he probably wanted to share. All I really know is that he loved my father. He says he was innocent. And he spent a lot more time with him than I ever did.’ […]
‘My point is, I emailed him to ask about my father’s altar. What he’d put on it, it it was him. He said he and Omar used to play dominoes and eat oranges outside Sabrina’s restaurant. That’s how they spent their breaks’ (308-309).
Thus, four years later, on the Day of the Dead, Martin commemorates his father with an altar of oranges and dominoes, honoring the memory he once resented. Omar and his family, redeemed and enlightened through collective memory and its ensuing truth—the memory that knows more about life, reality, and history than any singular impression could, and which always, as in the case of Galeano’s character, “retain[s] what is worthwhile” never losing “what deserves to be saved” (Days 2-3).
12 May 2020
Endnotes:
- See Gérard Genette’s “Introduction to the Paratext” cited at the end of this essay under “References.” Genette defines “paritext” as contextual material that appears within a written work before the actual body of the text, serving as informative and introductory aids for the central material. ↩︎
- See Plato’s Theaetetus (191a – 196c). ↩︎
- See Gloria Anzaldúa’s definition of “autohistoria” in This Bridge We Call Home, chapter titled, “now let us shift…path of conocimiento…inner work, public acts” (p. 578). It is related to autobiography and memoir with fictionalized components—can be employed as a means of uncovering, discovering the past, reclaiming history. ↩︎
- See pp. 18, 124-125 for Martin’s refusals to share and the tension it creates; pp. 54-55 for Elda’s reaction to Omar’s name; and pp. 4 and 19 for Claudia’s responses to the subject of Omar. ↩︎
Works Cited:
Díaz, Jaquira. Ordinary Girls. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, 2019.
Galeano, Eduardo. Days and Nights of Love and War. Monthly Review Press, New York, 2000.
Galeano, Eduardo. Memory of Fire. Translated by Cedric Belfrage, Open Road, New York, 1982.
Salomon, Carlos Manuel. “Chapter 24: QUEEN OF LAS FIESTAS PATRIAS AND OTHER STORIES: Oral History, Memory, and Latinx Culture.” The Routledge History of Latin American Culture, 1st Ed. Edited by Carlos Manuel Salomon, Routledge, New York, 2017.
Saunders, Nicholas J; Baquedano, Elizabeth. “Introduction: Symbolizing Tezcatlipoca.” Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity. Edited by Elizabeth Baquedano, University Press of Colorado, 2015.
Smith, Jonathan Z; Buxton, Richard G.A., et al. “Myths of Memory and Forgetting.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., January 03, 2017, https://www.britannica.com/topic/myth, Accessed 4 May 2020.
Sylvester, Natalia. Everyone Knows You Go Home. Little A, New York, 2018.
Villanueva, Victor. “‘Memoria’ Is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourse of Color.” College English, Vol. 67, No. 1, Special Issue: Rhetorics from/of Color (Sep., 2004), pp. 9-19.
References:
Anzaldúa, Gloria E. “now let us shift…the path of conocimiento…inner work, public acts.” This Bridge We Call Home. Edited by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Analouise Keating, pp. 540-578, Routledge, New York, 2002.
Genette, Gérard. “Introduction to the Paratext.” Translated by Marie Maclean. New Literary History, Vol. 22, No. 2, (Spring, 1991), pp. 261-272, The Johns Hopkins University Press, https://www.jstor.org/stable/469037.
Plato. Theaetetus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, Project Gutenberg EBook, 2008, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1726/1726-h/1726-h.htm, Accessed 4 May 2020.