Cantora: A Novel by Sylvia Lopez-Medina (review)

Reviews 189 business empire, and his wife Catherine, who it seems has never understood her strengths or her subordination. His debilitation and her awakening are the catalysts for all events. In its Neo-naturalism and homage to D. H. Lawrence, the novel contains a host of clichés and predictable situations, but is rescued by another kind of play, Roper’s manipulation of its self-referential elements. He embellishes his plot with coincidences pointing to Lawrence, and also to the various stories within the story, and in the end names the postmodern game he both mocks and plays. Two character-produced manuscripts frame the narrative: the novel-inprogrcss Bob Stein delivers to Catherine in the opening scene, and the letter to Catherine from her lover, the woodsman-musician Henry Bascomb, that ends the narrative. In between, Rick Mansure writes for publication a journal con­ cerning his illness and his abandonment by Catherine. She is the center; each man approaches with his preoccupation. Mansure’s accusations have some merit, yet his ideas are undercut by his ambiguous combination of high intelli­ gence and blind self-pity. Stein, novelist-within-the-novel, evokes the theme of writer-as-parasite, the ultimate trespasser. The transformation of Bascomb from rough and speechless forest man through “wolfish” seducer to articulate and cultured violinist seems both outrageous and convincing. All want freedom but look for structure, and all doubt the validity of the structures they find. In the end, Catherine-as-reader is a strong characterization: she objects to Stein’s manuscript, but enacts its plot; her reader-response to Bascomb’s letter is perhaps the great decision of her life. The Trespassers also meditates on the New West, with its population pres­ sures, boutique wineries, water shortages, domination by money, and naiveté about liberation myth-plots. Focusing upon the upper levels of society, Roper plays with the rude themes of wilderness pastoral, but in the context of a feminized civilization. What Roper writes about his own novelist-character Stein might also be applied to himself: “It was impossible to tell . . . whether he intended this to be taken with a grain of salt . . . or whether he was actually revealing himself. Perhaps he intended it to be taken in both ways, sincerely as well as facetiously. . . . ” ^KEl^RY AHEARN Oregon State University Cantora: A Novel. By Sylvia Lopez-Medina. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992. 306 pages, $17.95.) Sylvia Lopez-Medina’s first novel marks the appearance of an able new female voice. Cantora relates—via written narrative—what was previously an oral narrative handed from mother to daughter, of a Mexican-American family’s Mayan and courtly Spanish ancestral lineage. Endorsed by Chicana writer 190 Western American Literature Sandra Cisneros as “a history history forgot to mention,” this novel’s historical tale is that of upper class female resistance to paternal authority, family duty and female “respectability.” The brokering of women as wives for Spanish gentry provides the book’s central gender dilemma. Lopez-Medina goes beyond simply depicting patriar­ chal power to explore mothers’ and daughters’ complicity in the brokering process. The book’s matriarch, Rosario, refuses her own arranged marriage, yet makes arrangements for two of her daughters. Rosario’s daughter, Teresita, finally breaks with female complicity. Against the will of husband and motherin -law, Teresita will not permit Amparo’s—the daughter/narrator—arranged marriage to take place. Lopez-Medina comprehends that mothers participate in oppressive marital practices because they offer, tragically, the best future a m other can provide for the daughter she loves. In spite of Cisneros’ sisterly endorsement, Cantora seems an unlikely work to situate within a contemporary Chicana literature. The problem is not an absence of the barrio cadence, a linguistic signature of most Chicana narratives. The problem is that this book seems unaware there is a barrio. Although this narrator proclaims her “indio” identity, the markers of upper class European identity dominate the narrative. The novel’s characters are more accustomed to having, not being, servants. That, to my mind, fundamentally distances Cantora from previous Chicana writers’ sensibilities. Perhaps Lopez-Medina has more in common with the tradition of the Southwestern “Hispanic” women writers of the...