Guest Review: Dreaming With Mariposas

Guest Review: Sonia Gutiérrez Dreaming with Mariposas. McAllen, TX: Flowersong Press, 2021.

David Hollingsworth

Sonia Gutiérrez, author of Dreaming With Mariposas (link),  cites Tomás Rivera and Sandra Cisneros as two of her biggest literary inspirations. I've never read any of Rivera's work, but I've read "House on Mango Street" by Cisneros, and the influence is palpable. Both follow a young Chicana as she comes of age in the world(s) she grew up in. The biggest commonality is structural, though: both are a series of vignettes from the perspective of their protagonist, often only two or three pages each. 

That said, while Gutiérrez is influenced by Cisneros, her voice is very much her own. Her background as a poet gives her a playfulness with words that helps give a creativity to her writing without making it so metaphor-heavy that it begins to feel abstract. Her prose is imaginative, but easy to digest. It also features a moderate amount of Spanish dialogue. If you grew up in a Chicana/o household or neighborhood, it's nothing you haven't heard before, but if not, just be aware that you may want a Spanish to English dictionary (or Google Translate) at the ready. 

The story of this book, at its core, is about a young Chicana woman coming of age. Like "House on Mango Street" there is no coherent plot, but there is still an arc underneath it all. I think of it like a photo collage of someone growing up: it's not documenting any one particular event, but each individual piece is a snapshot that tells its own story, and taken together and viewed in order, you see the progression. 

In the beginning, she is a child observing the world around her. By the end, she's a young woman trying to make her way in the world on her own terms. 

These stories aren't just about the protagonist, either. They're not even just about her parents, her sister, or her abuelito, either. They're about all the community she grew up in, the Mexican-American working class of north county San Diego (Oceanside/Vista/San Marcos/Escondido). As someone who is half Mexican and grew up in Vista, it was wonderful to see representation done so well and honestly, showing both the beauty and pain that is both particular to where the story takes place and universal to the human experience. 

Overall, I very much enjoyed this book. It made me think and feel in a way that I know will stick with me in the way memories of all good novels do. This is a fantastic piece of Chicana literature, but it's also just a fantastic piece of literature in general.”

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Meet the Guest Reviewer

David Hollingsworth is an educator, writer, activist, and podcast host from Vista, CA who currently resides in Burbank, CA with his wife, Kat. 

David works as a non-student teaching assistant for UC San Diego’s Eleanor Roosevelt College and hosts a podcast called A Mouthful of History with two fellow historians. 

Hollingsworth earned his MA in History in 2018 from San Diego State University with an emphasis on US and Latin American history, and his BA in International Studies from UC Irvine with an emphasis on Latin America in 2014.