What Night Brings, Carla Trujillo
Reading assignment for Monday, October 29. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class.
Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.
How does the violence connect with Marcía’s sexuality and her coming of age? What realizations does she have to come to about herself and her family?
How is the 1960s setting important to this novel?
Does the text being a novel (fiction) as opposed to being an autobiography or autoethnography (non-fiction) change how you read the violence and coming of age aspects of the story?
As a novel, how does it compare to The House on Mango Street?
The violence in Marci’s life and her sexuality connect in several ways. One is that both of these are sources of much pain to her and she continually prays daily for change. She desperately wants God to make her father either leave, die, or change. She also prays for God to change her into a boy so that she could be with a girl. They both also relate in that, Marci believes if she was a boy it would solve the problem. If she were a boy she would be stronger and be able to beat up her dad so he could not overpower her and hurt her anymore. Also, a girl would like her and want to be with her. It is interesting how these relate to her coming of age because in the case of her abuse she desires outward change to solve her challenges. These challenges were solved by her coming of age. Marci and her sister Corin had to grow and change themselves to solve this issue with their dad. After their last event escalated with their dad beating their mom they got sick and tired and took action. Corin shot her father and Marci and her sister take a bus to New Mexico to live with their grandma Flor. They both knew their mom was never going to leave their dad no matter how bad he was and their dad was never going to stop beating them. Marici at eleven, had to come of age to take her sister and herself out of there. At the novels end, she finally meets a girl named Robbie and gets to hold her hand and kiss her. She realizes that she is not the only girl that feels this way and she does not need to be a boy for a girl to like her. “I didn’t know what to do or think. But for once I could say I felt so good it didn’t matter.” (242) Marci wanted her dad to change. She wanted her God to change her into a boy so that a girl would like her. These challenges changed her and her coming of age resulted in her solutions.
The fact that this book was a novel did not change the affects of it being a coming of age novel. The violence and pain was real and very similar to the other readings that were non-fiction. It still had a very realistic feel with many similar situations, and challenges amongst real victims of violence. “ Mom won’t believe us. She knows we don’t like Eddie, and she’ll think were just making it up. It’s the same as when we tell her he’s hitting us. She always believes him and not us.” (196)
I see the violence directly connected to her coming of age in terms of finding her own sexuality. Like some of the other authors we have read the previous weeks that also had to deal with domestic violence/abuse, Trujillo’s main character Marci, her mom and younger sister have to put up with the violence from their father. Marci sort of relates having power and being powerful to being a man and that’s part of the reason of how she comes to understand her own sexual identity. Trujillo writes “did I tell you that part of the reason I wanted to be a boy, besides loving girls, was so I could grow big muscles like the men in my Uncle Tommy’s muscle magazines? Then, I’d be able to beat up my dad” (15). Marci believes that being a man would give her power that she feels women lack.
I totally see this novel related to House on Mango Street in terms of narration. As the reader we get to see the world through the eyes of a really bright young girl. She understand complex issues around her and sees things differently just in the same way that Cisneros tells the story through the eyes of Esperanza. Both of these girls have really profound understandings of the world around them and see the injustices and want to change some of the bad things.
I think the 1960’s setting is important because it means Marci was living in a world that was still, for the most part, close-minded about taboo topics such as homosexuality, questioning and criticizing religion, and even single-motherhood and women’s independence. The 1960’s was the time period, when minds slowly began to open, and many radical changes occurred. But because of the majority of conservative thinking that Marci grew up in, she is naive to the “alternative” lifestyles of homosexuals, and fears that her own sexual orientation will doom her to a life of rejection and unhappiness. At the beginning of the book she desperately wants to conform, and the only way for her preference of girls to be normal is for her to be a boy. That is why she prays for God to change her. However, just like change eventually began to spread in the 1960’s, by the end of the novel, Marci has come of age in the sense that she accepts her different-ness. She no longer goes to church and doesn’t hide her religious doubts, and she begins to accept the fact that she will always be a girl, and that liking liking the same sex doesn’t make her strange and unacceptable. If this novel took place in a more recent decade, she may not have had the same insecurities and fears, and the abusive situation at home may have ended sooner if her mother was a more independent and empowered woman.
I find it very fascinating how Marcia has already become comfortable with her sexual identity at such a young age. She does not hesitate to mention that she is attracted to girls, but it’s very important to take note of her reasons for doing so. Marcia wishes she were male, thinking it would give her the strength to overpower her father. There are only two things that Marcia ever wishes for: (1) to have her father go away and (2) to become male. It seems as if these two things are completely different but there actually is a connection between the violence she experiences at home and the sexual identity she discovers.
Marcia has a higher level of maturity than her mother. She is more concerned over being a good wife than being a good mother, and chooses to play a very passive role in the abuse the father has towards his daughters. This reminded me of the mother in Josie Mendez-Negrete’s “Las Hijas de Juan” because she also became a yield in the abuse of her daughters – at least, at first she did. The difference is that the mother in “Las Hijas de Juan” eventually stood up for her family, riding herself of her abusive husband. I found it very disappointing that Marcia’s mother was not able to do the same. I lost respect for her as a mother, even as a woman. I didn’t think it real, for a woman to be able to act this way. As I read through the novel, I figured it made sense for me not to believe that a person could act this way because, after all, I was reading a piece of fiction. Knowing that the text was a novel as opposed to an autobiography or an autoethnography definitely changed my perception of it. I looked at the violence as a literary tool utilized to further heighten the coming-of-age aspect of the story. The coming of age moment was indeed powerful, and it demonstrated Marcia to be a very strong character.
Knowing this story to be a novel does not change the impact the characters gave me. I, as I read the book, thought the characters were real. The experiences each character went through are actual things that happen to many people. The lay out of each character is done so well, the book is great.