second half of mama blanca

Despite having my misconceptions about the book corrected, after completing Las Memorias de Mama Blanca I still did not like the book all that much. While I think the writing is creative (although somewhat confusing) in the sense that Parra is writing in a time period prior to her own reality, I was never able to get into it, and I was never all that interested in what she was saying. I found Cumanda to be much more interesting for the fact that there was a lot of action and suspense.  There was a purpose to keep reading in the sense that I wanted to find out what would happen to the characters in the end. In Las Memorias de Mama Blanca I did not feel this way at all.  Unfortunately, I was just waiting for it to be over.

 

The relationships between the members of the family were somewhat interesting, but I never felt like as a reader you came to know every character all that well (especially all of the sisters).  In addition, the commentaries surrounding the differences between the roles of males and females was somewhat interesting as well, but personally it is a somewhat tired theme.  It may have been entirely relevant to the time in which the book was written, but from an academic perspective this is a theme I have gone over numerous times, and it becomes slightly old. One thing that I did find interesting was that although there were not too many male characters, when they did come up in the book they would be given entire chapters to themselves that went on for some length (e.g. Primo Juancho, Vicente, and Daniel).  Perhaps this too is a commentary on the roles and importance of men versus women. I am not sure.