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Chicana Matters Series
Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me?: A Novel
Runner-up, Best Popular Fiction in English, Latino Book Awards Competition, 2010
The golondrina is a small and undistinguished swallow. But in Spanish, the word has evoked a thousand poems and songs dedicated to the migrant's departure and hoped-for return. As such, the migrant becomes like the swallow, a dream-seeker whose real home is nowhere, everywhere, and especially in the heart of the person left behind.
The swallow in this story is Amada García, a young Mexican woman in a brutal marriage, who makes a heart-wrenching decision—to leave her young daughter behind in Mexico as she escapes to el Norte searching for love, which she believes must reside in the country of freedom. However, she falls in love with the man who brings her to the Texas border, and the memories of those three passionate days forever sustain and define her journey in Texas. She meets and marries Lázaro Mistral, who is on his own journey—to reclaim the land his family lost after the U.S.-Mexican War. Their opposing narratives about love and war become the legacy of their first-born daughter, Lucero, who must reconcile their stories into her struggle to find "home," as her mother, Amada, finally discovers the country where love beats its infinite wings.
Bárbara Renaud González, a native-born Tejana and acclaimed journalist, has written a lyrical story of land, love, and loss, bringing us the first novel of a working-class Tejano family set in the cruelest beauty of the Texas panhandle. Her story exposes the brutality, tragedy, and hope of her homeland and helps to fill a dearth of scholarly and literary works on Mexican and Mexican American women in post–World War II Texas.
The golondrina is a small and undistinguished swallow. But in Spanish, the word has evoked a thousand poems and songs dedicated to the migrant's departure and hoped-for return. As such, the migrant becomes like the swallow, a dream-seeker whose real home is nowhere, everywhere, and especially in the heart of the person left behind.
The swallow in this story is Amada García, a young Mexican woman in a brutal marriage, who makes a heart-wrenching decision—to leave her young daughter behind in Mexico as she escapes to el Norte searching for love, which she believes must reside in the country of freedom. However, she falls in love with the man who brings her to the Texas border, and the memories of those three passionate days forever sustain and define her journey in Texas. She meets and marries Lázaro Mistral, who is on his own journey—to reclaim the land his family lost after the U.S.-Mexican War. Their opposing narratives about love and war become the legacy of their first-born daughter, Lucero, who must reconcile their stories into her struggle to find "home," as her mother, Amada, finally discovers the country where love beats its infinite wings.
Bárbara Renaud González, a native-born Tejana and acclaimed journalist, has written a lyrical story of land, love, and loss, bringing us the first novel of a working-class Tejano family set in the cruelest beauty of the Texas panhandle. Her story exposes the brutality, tragedy, and hope of her homeland and helps to fill a dearth of scholarly and literary works on Mexican and Mexican American women in post–World War II Texas.
256 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2009
3 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Bárbara Renaud González
4 books8 followersBárbara Renaud González is a Tejana born in South Texas, who grew up in the Texas Panhandle. She graduated with a B.A. in Social Work from the University of Texas Río Grande Valley and a Masters of Social Work from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She worked in Washington D.C., followed by postgraduate work at the Harvard Kennedy School, studying Immigration and Labor. Her novel, Golondrina, why did you leave me?, was the first Chicana novel published by the University of Texas Press in 2009. Author of The Boy Made of Lightning, an interactive children’s book on the life of the late, great, voting rights activist, Willie Velásquez, she is currently developing The (S)Hero’s Journey, a series of children’s books about the marginalized (s)heroes of Texas, and finishing her first Tex-Mex adult fairy tale.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 6, 2012
This book was filled with a lot of heart. I feel like it was written for me.
December 23, 2018
Moving, lyrical. Chicana politics conveyed subtly.
March 12, 2020
3.75 stars. Beautifully written!
October 19, 2021
Excellent. Where else you going to read about congueros?
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November 25, 2009FLY AWAY HOME
Mary Helen Ponce
Review of Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me?
By Bárbara Renaud González
University of Texas Press
Barbara Renaud Gonzalez’s contribution to the works on Mexican immigration that in recent years have dominated Chicano literature could have been subtitled “Yearnings.” Each of her characters longs for an elusive something, whether romance, a patrimony, a decent living or “home”; each is convinced the dream can be found across the border or across the state line.
Like the migratory swallow of the title, the golondrina, the childbride Amada Garcia flees Mexico to escape a brutal husband, abandoning her toddler Salome, and crosses the Rio Grande into Texas. There, barely across the border, she marries Lázaro Mistral, a Tejano who longs for the land his ancestors lost after the U.S.-Mexican War. The couple endure exploitation and racism and together build a large family, though Amada’s lifetime of labor is undercut by her husband’s ancient rage. Sadly, Amada’s story is as common as tacos: The Mexican immigrant experience is one of disappointment, injustice, low-paying jobs and the threat of violence. As Amada’s dream fades, her children seek their own place in the sun. Lucero, her eldest U.S.-born daughter, pines for an education; Salome, still in Mexico and now a mother of three, craves a reunion with her long-lost mother.
Renaud González’s debut novel reads like a telenovela, minus the happy ending: Women suffer, pray to La Virgen de Guadalupe for perseverance and, like Amada, wait for a man (hopefully handsome) to lift them from poverty. Her details of the Texas panhandle’s harsh beauty are lyrical, and her intimate acquaintance with the state’s geography and its flora and fauna is most impressive, as is her vast knowledge of the local vernacular and cuss words. But because she often ignores the writer’s obligation to show rather than tell, her book lacks an emotional tone. Also problematic is her overuse of Spanish. In early Chicano fiction it was common to sprinkle one’s work with words en español as a sign of authenticity; here it detracts from the narrative flow, which could be frustrating to the non-Spanish speaker. Still, this native-born Tejana has written convincingly of the hardships Mexican American women faced in post-World War II Texas—and of the need of the dispossessed to right old wrongs.
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MARY HELEN PONCE is the author of Hoyt Street: An Autobiography (University of New Mexico Press,
1993).
Mary Helen Ponce
Review of Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me?
By Bárbara Renaud González
University of Texas Press
Barbara Renaud Gonzalez’s contribution to the works on Mexican immigration that in recent years have dominated Chicano literature could have been subtitled “Yearnings.” Each of her characters longs for an elusive something, whether romance, a patrimony, a decent living or “home”; each is convinced the dream can be found across the border or across the state line.
Like the migratory swallow of the title, the golondrina, the childbride Amada Garcia flees Mexico to escape a brutal husband, abandoning her toddler Salome, and crosses the Rio Grande into Texas. There, barely across the border, she marries Lázaro Mistral, a Tejano who longs for the land his ancestors lost after the U.S.-Mexican War. The couple endure exploitation and racism and together build a large family, though Amada’s lifetime of labor is undercut by her husband’s ancient rage. Sadly, Amada’s story is as common as tacos: The Mexican immigrant experience is one of disappointment, injustice, low-paying jobs and the threat of violence. As Amada’s dream fades, her children seek their own place in the sun. Lucero, her eldest U.S.-born daughter, pines for an education; Salome, still in Mexico and now a mother of three, craves a reunion with her long-lost mother.
Renaud González’s debut novel reads like a telenovela, minus the happy ending: Women suffer, pray to La Virgen de Guadalupe for perseverance and, like Amada, wait for a man (hopefully handsome) to lift them from poverty. Her details of the Texas panhandle’s harsh beauty are lyrical, and her intimate acquaintance with the state’s geography and its flora and fauna is most impressive, as is her vast knowledge of the local vernacular and cuss words. But because she often ignores the writer’s obligation to show rather than tell, her book lacks an emotional tone. Also problematic is her overuse of Spanish. In early Chicano fiction it was common to sprinkle one’s work with words en español as a sign of authenticity; here it detracts from the narrative flow, which could be frustrating to the non-Spanish speaker. Still, this native-born Tejana has written convincingly of the hardships Mexican American women faced in post-World War II Texas—and of the need of the dispossessed to right old wrongs.
---
MARY HELEN PONCE is the author of Hoyt Street: An Autobiography (University of New Mexico Press,
1993).
January 18, 2010
I had been wanting to read this book for so long, the whole time I was studying for my exam this book was calling to me and when I finally got around to reading it, I felt a little let down. I love the topic and the idea behind the book, I think there should be more stories that speak of the immigrant experience, the real-life stories of everyday people who struggle and survive. I think the author tried to do too much in one book... it was like she just needed to get all this stuff off her chest and onto paper for someone else to process and the result left me feeling a little drained rather than pulled in for more.
January 18, 2011
Fun, quick read
January 4, 2011
school
January 24, 2014
it was very interesting in the beginning and then its just slow descriptions of their life. nothing really happened at the end to keep my attention. boring...
May 28, 2012
Very sad ending...I completely identify with the daughter who floats between two cultural worlds.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews