John Philip Santos" Things Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation and Norma Cantu's Canicula, are two memoirs that illustrate the essence of family and history. As the fourth generation in my family to be born in the United States, I could somewhat relate to the traditions, the stories of the family interactions, and the "growing pains" of maturing. .
The little I know about Mexican culture, I learned from my maternal grandmother. She taught me "dichos", herbal cures, and holiday customs. She reminded me of the "viejitas" in Santos" book. I was constantly being reminded to drink a glass of sugar water for "susto" and being prayed over while being rubbed with an egg for the "evil eye" which was the cause for any ailment from fever and headache to bad moods.
I remember being taken to a neighbor for a "sobada". I was also taken to a family friend for what amounted to a spinal adjustment to cure "empacho" (which thoroughly worked). In reading these two memoirs, I could not comprehend how Santos and Cantu did not tire of being around their extended family members. If I saw my cousins, aunts and uncles once every five years it was too much. Our family gatherings consisted of the aunts and uncles trying to "one-up" each other on their success and financial and material gains. There were never any favorite cousins because we never got to know each other. I saw my paternal grandmother maybe 10 times in my entire life as the family spanned between each seaboard. .
To this day, my father refuses to say that he is Mexican American. He is simply an American and his race is always to be checked off as white in that ever present, ominous box on forms. He objects to the label of Hispanic, Latino, and Chicano. To him, all memories of being Mexican are negative ones of being poor, discriminated against, being made to work hard labor in cotton fields as a child, and worst of all, being stigmatized as "ignorant".
