Delia's Song by Lucha Corpi

First published: 1989

Type of plot:Bildungsroman

Time of work: The late 1960’s to the mid-1970’s

Locale: Berkeley and the San Francisco Bay Area in California

Principal Characters:

• Delia Trevino, a Mexican American student at the University of California at Berkeley
• Jeff Morones, a young activist at Berkeley, the ultimate winner of Delia’s affections
• Roger N. Hart, alias “James Joyce,” a marine biologist around whom Delia’s fantasies revolve
• Mattie Johnson, Delia’s mentor, a sociologist and activist
• Marta Trevino de Ciotti, Delia’s beloved aunt
• Samuel Corona, the intellectual leader of the student revolution
• Julio Singer, a congo-playing poet
• Sara Gonzalez, Delia’s roommate

The Novel

Delia’s Song recounts a young woman’s maturation during the turbulence of student riots and civil rights movements in academic institutions during the late 1960’s. The novel is divided into three sections and consists of twelve chapters.

The story begins with a flashback in an italicized passage that suggests the intensity of Delia’s emotional state. The book then switches immediately into the central event of the main plot, which took place earlier in the novel’s chronology. The disjointed nature of the plot requires the reader to remain attentive to cues within the narrative in order to make chronological sense of the sequence of events, but the unconventional structure is one of the novel’s best features.

Delia, dressed as the Carmelite Santa Teresa and overwhelmed by suddenly erupting memories of fire, terror, and threatening predators, has an emotional blackout as she contemplates a tenacious single yellow rose hanging to its branch in November (the rose is a unifying symbol throughout the narrative). She falls, swooning, and is rescued by none other than James Joyce himself, or so it seems to the distracted Delia, who is herself not who she seems in this scene. Gathering her wits, she continues to her destination, a “Day of the Dead” costume party given by Mattie Johnson, her mentor.

The narrative then shifts to the story’s chronological beginning, as a nineteen-year-old Delia is introduced to the highly charged political campus life at Berkeley. She meets Samuel, Jeff, and Sara and begins her involvement with the social movement to establish a department for Third World studies at the university. The students and idealistic activists of MASC (the Mexican American Student Confederation) are taken with Delia’s mysterious but intelligent personality.

The political and sexual tensions build. The confrontation between the students and the administration culminates in a conflict with the police, the sting of tear gas, and sudden mayhem. In the midst of all the upheaval, Jeff and Delia kiss, ostensibly to divert attention from themselves as activists, but obviously with much passion. Their kiss creates a romantic connection that forms the love theme of the novel, but the could-be lovers are soon star-crossed, separated by youthful misunderstandings when Jeff, heroically carrying a wounded Delia away from the rioting, takes amiss a comment she makes. The two become increasingly sensitive, estranged, and huffy, as young lovers tend to be, and the chapter ends with Delia’s pride smarting when Sara tells Delia that Jeff has requested a transfer to the Riverside campus.

The group disintegrates after the revolution, as internal and external pressures create personality conflicts and inevitable disillusionment. Samuel begins to drink heavily, and Delia, involved with an abusive lover (the most disturbing of several disappointing lovers), becomes more and more depressed, agonizing over her failures with Jeff. The main character’s decline parallels the decline of the student activist group, and Delia’s despair echoes the difficulty of the group’s idealistic dreams.

The narrative returns to the Day of the Dead costume party, where Delia has gathered her wits enough to proceed on her journey after her fall in the first chapter. She arrives late at the party and again encounters the mysterious “James Joyce,” who, like herself, is in costume. She and “Joyce” consummate their desires by making love in the backyard under the barbecue pit (a spicy reference to Delia’s country of origin, its folklore, and her sexuality), after which “Joyce” gives Delia his card, encouraging her to call him; she does not.

The second major movement of the novel takes Delia away from Berkeley, away from the two men of whom she is enamored—Jeff Morones of the kiss and now “James Joyce” of the barbecue pit—to her Aunt Marta’s in Monterey, California.

The history of Delia’s family occupies the center of the novel and is related through conversations with Aunt Marta. Delia’s growing commitment to her writing parallels her healing focus on herself and her heritage. When the lost lover Jeff appears, invited to the house by an unsuspecting Aunt Marta, the interrupted romance resumes on a stronger beat, but Delia remains unsettled because of her obsession with “James Joyce,” who, it turns out, is a distant relative of Mattie’s and a widower.

Delia and Jeff, however, begin a courtship and engage in a number of lover’s quarrels, which serve in part to develop the novel’s social criticism of sexism. Delia decides, upon receiving an invitation from Mattie, to return to Berkeley for a visit and to look up her “Joyce,” the tormenting object of her fantasies since their erotic encounter.

The third section of the novel narrates Delia’s return to Berkeley to say farewell to Mattie (who has decided to move to Honduras) and to meet Roger N. Hart, alias “Joyce,” in order to settle the question of her attraction to him. After much indecision, she does call him. She discovers that although he is a decent and worthy man who has held her in his own mind all this while, she is not, in fact, in love with him. Thus she returns to a rather nervous Jeff, but not without first coming to terms with a lifetime of conflict through her writing.

She returns to Monterey, completes her book (one very like Delia’s Song), shares the story and manuscript with a concerned Aunt Marta, and eventually hands the typed manuscript over to a mystified and upset Jeff, who has not understood his lover’s odd behavior. The book is Delia’s statement of personal liberation, saying to Jeff, in effect, “this is who I am, take me as I am or not at all.” Aunt Marta questions the wisdom of such a brash and honest move, but Delia is for once certain of her actions.

The Characters

Delia is the title character and the consciousness through which the novel is largely filtered. A young woman—a freshman from a Mexican heritage at the University of California at Berkeley—Delia struggles to come to terms with a painful past, a confusing present, and an uncertain future. The reader is initially confused about her identity; not only is she disguised as a saint, she is lost and distraught. The opening scream of pain (one of many interjected italicized poetic passages reflecting nightmarish eruptions of memory) introduces the question that is the novel’s focus: Who, really, is Delia Trevino?

That Delia has some unresolved personal pain is evident in the flashback narrative, told in italicized stream-of-consciousness passages. The flashbacks reveal the heroine’s disturbance over the violent deaths of her two brothers, Sebastian and Ricardo, and indicate her conflicted relationship with her mother and father, who devalue this intelligent and sensitive girl-child.

Coming from a Mexican heritage complete with folkloristic elements (seen in images of spicy, hot foods and Catholic iconography), Delia carries internally the burden of the family’s hopes, even when those hopes have been dashed by the loss of her brothers. She carries these turbulent feelings with her to college, but she remains distant, taciturn. She becomes, therefore, an attractive mystery to her influential professor, Mattie Johnson, and to the group of students to which Mattie introduces her.

This group, all members of the activist MASC, consists of Samuel Corona, who becomes Delia’s confidant; Julio Singer, a conga-playing poet; Sara Gonzalez, her roommate; and Jeff Morones. None of these characters is highly developed, although Jeff, who is the foil for Delia’s maturation, begins to take on some three-dimensional qualities near the end of the book.

Jeff is a young, idealistic, and sensitive young man, one whom Delia cannot understand at all (largely because she is in conflict within herself). Jeff seems baffling to Delia as he leaves Berkeley, feeling himself shunned, as does she, and drops out of her life.

When Jeff appears in the novel again, he is a successful young man who has pursued his love of horses, his love of poetry, and a career. He represents for Delia forces with which she must come to terms in her own life and culture, forces that will devalue her intellect, her sexuality, and her culture, but forces that, nevertheless, are as loving as they are insensitive. Jeff has matured by the time he appears on Aunt Marta’s doorstep, but the reader does not participate in this young man’s sudden maturation, although the reader learns that Jeff’s father has died. Jeff’s character is told rather than shown, and as such remains rather flat.

Mattie Johnson, Delia’s mentor and eventual friend, is a more fully developed character than Jeff. She is present during Delia’s growing-up process, serving as wise woman, academic adviser, and sometimes pal. Mattie is an activist, a professor, and the intellectual core around which the group of students gathers as the story is unfolded. Mattie’s role in the novel is essential, because she is the character who holds most of the themes together as well as the character through which most of the others connect (except for Aunt Marta, who is the answering “wise woman” figure in Monterey). Significantly, when Mattie leaves Berkeley to pursue her socialist ideals in Honduras, Delia finally completes her initiation into womanhood, rejecting her fantasy lover, returning to full selfhood and her true love, Jeff.

Critical Context

Delia’s Song is the first published novel of a well-established poet, but it is not a strong work. Lucha Corpi has gained critical acclaim for her Palabras de mediodía/ Noon Words (1980) and is well respected as a poet and fiction writer, with works appearing in numerous journals. Yet Delia’s Song, while fascinating in its efforts, fails to live up to Corpi’s artistic reputation.

Delia’s Song has much to recommend it, but as a fully grown, full-blown novel, it fails. One senses that it may have been hastily written, if gathered over three decades; one senses that the author may have been purging a past as much as creating a work of art. These speculations come to mind because the characters stay, for the most part, flat and undeveloped, even though the characterization of Delia does compel attention and respect.

The psychological complexity of Delia—even though she never quite becomes a flawed, endearing, human being—holds the key to the novel’s contribution to modern literature. The importance of the novel is its celebration of the intellect and sexuality of a Mexican (and, by extension, any) woman. In the description of Delia’s self-doubt, her tormenting concern about her talents, and her erratic (sometimes saintly, sometimes sexy) personal development, the novel indicates the jagged inner life of any young woman with a mind trying to maintain integrity in a world that is given to devaluing her.

Bibliography

Brinson-Pineda, Barbara. “Poets on Poetry: Dialogue with Lucha Corpi.” Prisma 1, no. 1 (1979): 4-9. Interview with Corpi about her poetry and her dominating social themes of women’s oppression and liberation.

Corpi, Lucha. “Belle Lettres Interview: Lucha Corpi.” Interview by Angels Carabi. Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women. 7 (Winter, 1992): 48-52. Corpi discusses the status of women in Mexico as well as her own exile from her homeland. She also speaks about the sensuality of images in her work, the musical approach she takes toward poetry, and her love for Emily Dickinson.

Corpi, Lucha. Máscaras. Berkeley, Calif.: Third Woman Press, 1997. A collection of essays by Chicana writers that deal with their craft. Corpi’s introduction sheds light on the difficulties Mexican American female authors face.

Curiel, Barbara Brinson. “Lucha Corpi.” In Chicano Writers: First Series, edited by Francisco A. Lomelí and Carl R. Shirley. Vol. 82 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989. Discusses Corpi’s poetry at length and gives more critical attention to her short stories than to her first novel. Notes that “Corpi’s recent fiction is characterized by its portraits of women in untenable situations who choose a course of action and who follow it, often with tragic consequences.”

Publishers Weekly. Review of Delia’s Song, by Lucha Corpi. 234 (November 4, 1988): 80. Condemns Delia’s Song as an over-romanticized, poorly told tale of a “one-dimensional” heroine whose “decisions seem glib.” Asserts that “the conflicts in the central character are so superficially explored that her efforts to resolve them are ultimately of little interest.”

Sanchez, Marta Ester. Contemporary Chicana Poetry: A Critical Approach to an Emerging Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Acknowledges Corpi’s outstanding literary reputation. Written before publication of Delia’s Song.

Vallejos, Tomás. “Chicano/a Writing: Social Insights.” American Book Review 11 (January-February, 1990): 13. Discusses the virtues and flaws of Corpi’s first novel, noting that she has unsuccessfully attempted to transfer her fine poetic voice to the genre of fiction. Argues that the strong points of Delia’s Song are its technically well-wrought narrative structure, the interest generated by the use of Delia’s nightmares, and the account of the political events in Berkeley.