Catina’s Blog

One of the things about being part of any group of people is sticking togather. Native American people are have a close tide to each other in the way of family. One of the interesting things about this story is that the group is seaperated, and they seperate at a time when they should have stuck closly togather! When Sadie and Victor found dirty joe in the middle of a carnival drunk they forgot all of the unity im sure that was instulled in them. When deciding to put Dirty Joe on the roller coaster for show it reminded me of what some highschool students feel from peer pressure to be ” cool” , and these were not Sadies or Victors peers. In highschool somtimes students feel presure from others to do a certain thing or act a certain way. When all the white people saw crazy Joe drunk they were staring and looking at all three of of them like they were ” dirty Indians” Sadie and Victor felt pressure. They were standing there wondering if they should take Joe and continue the embarassment or leave him behind. The decision to put him on the rollercoaster I believe was the “cool” thing to do to get all of the peoples attention off of all three of them and just onto Dirty Joe. As they crowd got larger Sadie and Victor relized that they had become traders to there people. I believe the amusment wasnt for the white people but for Sadie and Victor!

Time and time again stories play important roles in any and everyones life. I can remember being a young child listening to my grandparents tell me the stories of struggle that African American people had to go through to get the rights of mankind. In both Ceremoney and in House of Spirits a story is being told as kind of a theropy to the people telling the story. In Ceromony, the story told is the actual medican for the guy who had shell shock and began to drink after the war. Once this man told the story he had then completed the ceremony of cleansing himself and of all his people. In House of spirits Alba is being tortured in a concentration camp and is remembering all of her past. In my opinion Alba is telling her story becuase she has lost herself in the terror and the one thing my family tells me is ou are who your family is. She is who her family is and she doesnt know how to find who she is so she writes this story! One thing about stories is they can be healing or they can be heart breaking, but in the end its what you make of it. Stories remind people of the past so that they can move on in the future.

Wow this is like a modern version of Romeo and Juliet lol. Blanca and the lil boy now man Pedro have really fallin inlove. I believe that it is really love because they grew up togather and have been freidns before they turned into lovers. The thing about thi sbook is it points out how rich people stay rich and the poor people stay poor. Blanca and Pedro are so concerned about being politically correct that they meet in secret and have secret codes to talk to each other, this is amazing to me, if it were me and my man i would have just told everyone that i was in love and did not care who thought what about it. Noe Pedro is pushing it too far with his whole rebel thing becuase he knows that he is in love with Blanca he should either give that up or do it and not be with Blanca because this is going to cause her a lot of trouble, exspecally since he is now not allowed on the land!

One of the things that i did notice in this book was the path of the social ladder. The patron of all plantations always finds some way of humiliation towards woman. The master of every plantation always finds these little girls and gets them pregenet and them acts as if he never touch the girl. Why is it that this man chose to have sex with these little girls and was one still married, two they were little girls and three he did not take care of any of the children that he made with these woman on his plantation. He says that he loved Clara so much but he continued to cheat of her and get angrey with her while she took care of him and the house for the first time!

Esteban Trueba was a in the bigging a nice master of his whole entire plantation. In the beginning I thought that this great man came to change the way of these poor peoples lives, but in the end her tormented them through keeping them uncivilized. He never paid the people any money only pink slipps. In a way I think he gave them pink slips inorder to keep them buying materials from him and only him. He also keep put the media and all the things that the people could read ro see or hear to avoid them from the resolutions. Through all of his ignorance he still continued to have love for his wife Clara. I know that his love for Clara was genuine but i wonder where this genuine love comes from, I believe this love comes from the love that he had for Rosa. I would have never let any man marry my daughter after having love for another one of my daughters, that is only the man picking second best. After all that these people do for him, saving him after all of his bones are crushed and even at that helping him build up his shitty plantation he should treat these people with dignity and respect!

Nana, was there for Clara from the time when she went silent, trying to scare her to talk and all types of things to help her. Nana raised all of the children and was some what like there grandmother. When Claras’ parents died Nana came to live with the family and i knew that Claras’ sister in law would have a fit of jelousy! I believe that When Claras’ husband kicked out his sister that Nana was happy. I have to say that I was also happy becuase i believe that she had an unsafe relationship for Clara and should have been kicked out a long time agao lol she was trying to watch her brother make love to his wife, ewww ewww how grose! You can tell that she had a love for Clara because when she died she came to say go bye to her as a ghost! This book is weird in so many ways.

Now i understand that eastban wants to protect Clara from any type of stress during her pregnacy but that was rediculas! One of the most important things to Clara is her family, so how can he not want anyone to tell her that her parents had died in a car accident. He should have also been thinking that she has these special powers and that she would dream or predict it anyway. I could not believe what I was reading when she went to find the head of her mother with no directions just using her pure instinct! Once they arrived in the middle of no where she asked the driver to go and grabb the head of her mother! If i was that driver I would have been like HELL NO lol but I guess he had to do what he had to do for his tip!

Cortez is putt of to be he stereo type of a Spanish man in the litature that we read in class. the violint, mustash, gun shooting vibrant stereo type that society puts upon these men of a minority group. I liked the movie way better because it showed that cortez was a man just like the rest of the men that were trying to sentance him. It also showed that he was a family man, and the only reason that he shot the sherif was becuase he shot his brother. I like this story because it also brings a level of heroic achievement with cortez having 300 men surrounding him and still escaping is a great story to tell children for years and years to come.

It seems that Clara takes all of the deaths in the family harder than anyone else. Is it because she has these powers dealing with the dead or is it just because she seems to be close with her sister and her uncle. Atleast when her uncle died she got the dog, but when her sister died I could tell that somthing bad was going to come of it, but not 9 years of silance. Why is it that she morned her sisters death for so long but then ends up being with the man that her sister was to marry? I wonder if Easban really loved Clara or loved the fact that Clara is Rosa the beautifuls little sister, in my opinion the man is sick!

Reading this book was difficult untile I got the jift of it. The poerty in the book is the kind of Native American perspective of the situtation, but you have to pay close attention to the metaphores. I also noticed how there were a lot of flash backs to the time when he was in the war. It was confusing in the begining but in the end I understood that inorder to understand the whole book and why this man was so sick, we needed to flash back to when he was in war and understand what all he saw and herd. All in all this book was a good book to read but I would only tell an advanced reader to read it because it is very deep in thought.