Memoir. "The vivid and compassionate story of one woman's- and one family's- struggle to come to terms with the shattering consequences of exile. Highly recommended for the poignancy of its writing and the sensitive portrayal of an often misunderstood community"-Gustavo Perez Firmat. SCATTERING THE ASHES is a book about exile, about Cuba and her offspring, and about the power of history and politics over Cubans' daily lives. Maria del Carmen Boza tells that shared history through the private story of a family living and adapting awkwardly to an alien land, with, according to Howard Norman, "unmitigated integrity, beauty, courage and passion." Boza lives in Maine and teaches in the writing workshop at Bates College.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This fictionalized life story of Teresa Urrea, a real woman who came to prominence in the late 1800s as the unofficial saint of the Mexican Revolution, has many of the earmarks of effective fiction: revolution, mysticism, romance, the singular individual life played out against a background of deep social injustice. Sad to say, Domecq's stiff (or stiffly translated) prose undermines her tale, and a framing device in which a present-day scholar obsessed with Teresa makes a pilgrimage to Cabora further robs the narrative of immediacy. The daughter of a servant and a lecherous ranch boss, Teresa exhibits unusual powers and eventually falls into a three-month trance during which she acquires the ability to perform miraculous cures. She gains a following among the poor, and they invoke her name in a revolt against Mexico's oppressive dictator, Porfirio D!az. False rumors of Teresa's involvement in the uprisings spread, and she and her father are imprisoned, then exiled to the U.S. As drawn by Domecq, Teresa's is a life full of paradox and conflict. She is a famed healer powerless to mend the rifts in her own family; a pacifist in whose name blood is shed; a visionary who can't see her way to personal happiness. The problem is that Domecq describes Teresa's inner struggles in dull, uninflected passages that keep her at a distance. This lack of subtlety at critical moments flattens the impact of what could have been a compelling story.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
One of Mexico's leading writers, Domecq does not disappoint her readers with this masterfully translated work of historical fiction. Her heroine, Teresa Urrea, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy landowner and an impoverished Yaqui servant, rises from an obscure birth and childhood to recognition by her father, then into legend as a faith healer among the poor. Teresa uses her will and intellect to exert extraordinary power over her own life, considering her gender and her social and cultural circumstances. That power, however, becomes overshadowed as others use her, at first for political purposes and then for financial gain. Never losing her dignity, she finds herself in exile in the United States, where she continues to heal and help others until an early death. Domecq's literary voice never wavers in this beautiful, hypnotic work. Highly recommended for all collections.?Carolyn Ellis Gonzalez, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio Libs.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A moving story about reconciliation with the past,
By A Customer
This review is from: Scattering the Ashes (Paperback)
The act of emigration is traumatic for most of us, who retain the freedom to return to our homelands, to visit family and friends, to find the comfort of familiar sights and sounds. In Ms. Boza's memoir, a fragile young girl emigrates to this country as an exile who can never see her extended family or home again. She writes a poignant and thought-provoking story about her struggle to make peace with her past and move on with her life. While this book is not eary to read, it is beautifully written and worth the effort. I'm still thinking about it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A courageous book -- difficult and rewarding.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Scattering the Ashes (Paperback)
Think of Cuban exiles and you will likely come up with a stereotypical figure -- rich, right-wing, insane. In the US this prejudice is largely unexamined. Cuban exiles are easy to dismiss. But I wouldn't dismiss this one.Boza, a Cuban exile who came to the US when she was eight, has written a courageous book -- her first. Compelled to discover why her father committed suicide -- she explores the effect of the political on the personal within her own family, and within the exile community. Boza writes compellingly about this life in exile, a life sometimes warped by memories of the old and the realities of the new. Her father was a player in Cuban exile politics, and was consumed with this, becoming more and more bitter after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Yet he is sympathetic, and Boza is successful in writing honestly of an imperfect man in a way that makes his obsession understandable if not troubling. But this memoir is not just about her father. It explores how, after coming to Miami, life in exile unravelled, how personal things, and connections with the commonplace - birthdays, clothes, food -, became more and more of an abstraction. And she writes about her own struggles to make her own world concrete again. It is a difficult book in some ways. Boza moves against the grain. Her narrative skips in time. At times the narrative intrudes on our own sense of privacy making us a little uncomfortable. She often interrupts the narrative, disrupting the political with the personal or vice versa, taking long detours around the subject. Memory intrudes - some pleasant, some ugly. We look at it all. But the writing is strong throughout, and there are numerous long sections that are poetic if not sublime. Life in exile, in spite of the ease with which we can imagine it, must have been/must be strange and isolating. Much more so for an eight-eighteen year old to watch ones parents slip into a kind of madness. There are no heroes in this book. But it took a lot of courage to write.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A compelling memoir,
By book worm (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Scattering the Ashes (Paperback)
I recently returned from Cuba, and it has been quite difficult for me to reconcile the bitterness of Cuban Americans with the beauty of the island. I have been reading a lot of Cuban American memoirs from the 1.5 generation recently, and Maria Del Carmen Boza is the first author who I have seen to set aside her anger over losing her homeland with the Revolution and creating a real portrait of Cuba in the 1950's. A beautiful piece of literature, I highly recommend this book.Also recommended, Three Trapped Tigers, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, the Moon Guide to Cuba
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