And a Body to remember with

Wow Wow! I'm really enjoying Rodriguez' book even though  the stories are very painful. Its a very quick read, but with in an hour, Rodriguez takes us through 4 different emotional roller coasters. It's like having all your body waxed in 5 min. Before you have the time to think how much waxing your right leg hurt, someone else is waxing your bikini or something! It's like ouch.... ouch... ouch! Each story in this book is precious and amazing, and even though the book is pretty small and quick to read, it reveals soooo much. The stories touch upon, exile, immigration, race, family, gender, class, identity, nationality, geography, torture and gendered torture, public and private sphere... we could spend a class or two talking about each chapter. 

Some of the main symbolic things that stand out in this book are body and  communication. 

I think the body represents the home country, feeling of pain and suffering, and finding one's identity.  

From the beginning of the book we see how Estela uses, letters and the phone to communicate with her loved ones back in Chile...then there are times that she can not communicate what she feels, and just cries, because no one would understand her. In other chaptersthe protagonists communicate with comadre, or Abuelita Flor, who have passed away... lost friends...  by placing them in their heart or mind and talking to them, because they're the ones who would understand them, but are not present. 

One of my favorite examples of failure of communication is on page 83, in the chapter "trespass", where the protagonist is telling her dream to Luis (the cute guy)

"I was in a place where there were dozens of phones all over the place,  on the walls, the tables, the floor, everywhere. I went from one telephone to the next saying hello, hello, but all the phones were either dead, didn't have a tone, or had their cables cut."

I think this represents how there is no possibility of a dialogue, to talk about their lives, or communicate with people, because of fear and distrust that the dictatorship has created. They do not have  a voice and have to mute their personal opinion.