Mother Tongue
Every woman has a story that is all her own. She carries this story with her all of her life and faces each new part of it as it unfolds. It has only been in more recent times that women have been able to share their story through literature and be critically recognized. Women's stories are finally beginning to be seen as valuable. Plays, novels, and poetry emerge and the passion within these stories is a reflection of the women who write them. These revelations help women express who they truly are. Demetria Martínez, through her novel Mother Tongue, emphasizes the role of women as storytellers. She reminds us that whether we find ourselves speaking the whispers of love, advice to our children, or the pains of political struggle, we are telling and retelling our own stories.
Martínez's story of María is told against the backdrop of the 12-year civil war in El Salvador. Though the North American movement for justice in Central America has been well documented through social and political histories, less work has been done on the ways the movement has transformed the hearts and souls of the people of the United States. The lives of many North Americans were radically changed through contact with the struggle of the people of Central America during the 1970s and '80s.
Demetria Martínez, a columnist for National Catholic Reporter and a poet, lays the groundwork for such a history of personal transformation in Mother Tongue. Filled with beautifully expressed phrases and reflections on the recent history of Central America, this book tells the story of a woman whose heart was shaped, broken, and resurrected when circumstances lead her to fall in love with a war refugee from El Salvador and into a lifelong struggle to define herself.
Through these events, María's story unfolds. Instead of the story being told as it happens, Martínez chooses to look backward on time and let María piece together the last 19 years of her life through newspaper clippings, letters, love poems, and photographs. She recounts the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings of a part of her life that she had closed off. It is only when she unearths these memoirs that the story starts to materialize. But the true essence of María's ability to be a storyteller is the way she recaptures the emotion of those years. She says, ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Through these events, María's story unfolds. Instead of the story being told as it happens, Martínez chooses to look backward on time and let María piece together the last 19 years of her life through newspaper clippings, letters, love poems, and photographs. She recounts the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings of a part of her life that she had closed off. It is only when she unearths these memoirs that the story starts to materialize. But the true essence of María's ability to be a storyteller is the way she recaptures the emotion of those years. She says, "You see, I am good at filling in the blanks, at seeing meaning where there may have been none at all. In this way I get very close to illusion. Or closer still to the truth" (Martínez 11).
María was a young Chicana who barely spoke Spanish when she had her love-at-first-sight experience with José Luis as he disembarked a plane in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She knew when she met him that "Before his arrival the chaos of my life had no axis about which to spin. Now I had a center" (5). In the pursuit of her his heart, she comes face to face with the deep scars of war in the dark places of his soul and attempts to exorcise the enormity of his pain with her affection. She is overwhelmed with passion for both the people who suffer in this El Salvador and her passion is heightened by her love for José Luis.
María's romantic illusions about José Luis and the nature of their love continually run up against reality in this book. Though José Luis is somewhat more experienced at love, his own biased misconceptions of who North Americans are and what they want sabotage his relationship with María from the start. In the process, María gains the inner experience that pushes her into a new life far beyond what she might have known if she had not taken the risky leap of love.
This is where María's story begins. She encounters its painful, abrupt end when José Luis abuses her in a panicked fit of war flashbacks. She remembers, "my face had disappeared and became the face of the soldier . . ." (160). Their love unravels and soon after José Luis leaves her. The one man who gave her life meaning abandoned her, and it seems as if her story is over.
María's story is hardly over. Not too long after José Luis' departure, María discovers that she is pregnant with his child. Already she has faced many issues that women endure: deep love, abuse, and rejection. Now she must go on to raise a child alone. This turn of events causes María to lock away her memories and block out the story of her life. She pushes on and ignores her past, as many women try to do.
María is successful, however, and José Luis junior becomes an intelligent young man and her faithful companion. She might have believed that the only story that mattered was the love story in her life, but the wisdom she shares as a mother is as equally integral to the story as every other part.
Mother Tongue also shows us how raising children can renew our lives and give new reasons to share the story of life with them. Through María's love for her and José Luis' child, she shows how important it is to pass on values and idealism to the younger generation in order for the struggle for justice to continue. It helps dispel the delusion that the existence of peace and justice in this world depends on us alone-rather, it is the work of each generation to seek it for themselves. María passes on wisdom through her story in hopes that little José Luis will understand. It is urgent, for she says, "Once a story is begun the whole thing must be told or it kills. If the teller does not let it out, the tale will seize her, and she will live it over and over without end, all the while believing she is doing something new" (89).
María's courage to tell the whole story is remarkable. It gives her the strength to travel to El Salvador to find out what really happened to José Luis. When his whereabouts are declared unknown, she has the fortitude to embrace it as another chapter in her story. The most poignant turn of events, however, is beyond María's grasp, and promise that her story is anything but over.
Key to understanding Martinez's portrait of María is that is a work in progress. María documented the facts, the emotions, and the mysteries that surrounded both her love for José Luis and her passion to make the world a better place. In doing so she realized that her story is never quite over, but appears in many reincarnations and manifests itself in unusual ways.
To reveal the end of this novel would be cheating its ultimate purpose: to encourage women to live with passion, remember their individual stories, and work towards a more peaceful future for their children.
While the large frame of this work involves politics and love, Demetria Martínez deftly turns this story inward and gives us a compassionate portrait of a woman who learns to exchange her fragility for strength. María admits the fundamental truth of the woman as storyteller: "I am just beginning to discern the shape that was there all along, just beginning to become me" (190).
