Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters is about friendship and feminism, to be sure, but these factors serve as more of a scrim that, once illuminated, reveals themes of identity, ethnicity, and tension. At first, I was skeptical about a novel composed of a collection of letters. I suspected that it might seem trivial or stilted or overly sentimental--that it might be constrained by its own form. Or, archaic and therefore not relevant to a culture where letter writing is nearly extinct. Upon reading the first few pages of "Letter One," I was initially confused by the hodgepodge of characters and irked by my inability to translate Spanish. Because of context, I got the gist of some of the phrases, but otherwise spoke these words aloud, so I could, at least, listen to and appreciate their musicality. And what of the of the correspondence? How can Castillo's approach work without Alicia's letters--her side of the story? Upon further reading, I got caught up in Castillo's conversational technique where Alicia's experiences are imprinted on us by way of Teresa's recollection and reflection on and from both of their perspectives. This, I think, is part of what makes Letters a novel. Castillo transports us into a sort of past-present, rooting the reader in a place where memory is transformed into the here and now, transcending mere nostalgia.
I found it easier to negotiate my way through Castillo's cast of characters once I matched my reading to the rhythm of her writing and adjusted myself to her punctuation and shifts in time and place. There is much more to be garnered, here, in terms of craft. Castillo begins each letter with a different salutation that sets the tone of the text: "My sister, my companion, my friend." I wonder, does Castillo use the lowercase "i" to portray Teresa as a lapsed Catholic still humbled by the capital "G" in God? Lowercase usage could certainly be used to convey a "less-than" effect. The pronoun "you" in reference to Alicia is always capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, as is "we." It seems, however, that the "i" is meant to represent the still developing yet-to-be-fully-evolved Teresa. In "Epilogue" at the end of the novel, she achieves an uppercase "I."
Castillo's sentences bloom. They start out slow and then quickly grow big and fat and full with detail. She saves her shorter sentences for the more profound, pensive or meditative : "She watched for a long time" and "We said no more." She lumps things together or speaks of things in a series, creating a collage of rich sounds, scents, and images:
"High above the trash-ridden streets of Manhattan, the hornblowers, and double parkers, the winos, derelicts, pushers and pimps, the spicy aromas of cumin and garlic, curry, and fried plantains, burning tenements, stench of urined and vomited walls, blasting screech of subway trains..."
Teresa is a writer and Castillo's decision to include examples of her poetry is an effective characterization device. John Irving did this when he included fiction written by his writer-protagonist in the novel The World According to Garp. The poetry offers a deeper, more immediate portrait of Teresa beyond the context of the already intimate main text. The idea of supplementing a story in this way opens up all kinds of possibilities, particularly in contemporary terms. A novel could include emails, urls, even a CD--say, so you could listen to a musician character's music. In terms of my own writing, I plan on including a significant photograph from the 1800's with the story I'm currently working on. Structurally speaking, excerpts from a book connect the two characters who live in the same house in two different times. Castillo's novel resonates with me because I've explored themes of ethnicity and isolation in my own work. Her approach has got me thinking about how I handle the tension between my characters. There is much to be culled from Castillo's Letters, her physical descriptions of her characters say much about them, even before we "get to know them." More than anything, she teaches us that, sometimes, when it comes to character, telling is better than showing: "Alicia, why i hated white women and sometimes didn't like you." The intimacy Castillo has set up between the two women make this kind of honest "dialogue" possible.
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