So Far from God by Ana Castillo

First published: 1993

The Work

So Far from God is a tragicomic exploration of the cultural and temporal collisions in the Chicana world. A third-person narrator tells the story of two decades in the life of the resilient Chicana Sophia and her four ill-fated daughters in a small town in central New Mexico. The novel is a comedic mix of melodrama, visions, recipes, Catholicism, folklore, and miracles. In keeping with the tradition of oral literature, the storyteller sustains an intimate, conversational tone, incorporating Latino slang and regional dialect.

A parody of the Latin American staple, the telenovela, or soap opera, the protagonists are soap opera stereotypes. The visionary and comic plot is filled with ironies, and it contrasts the fantasy of the telenovela genre with the realities of Chicana lives. The novel’s admiration and empathy is for the Chicana—the men in the book are damaged or weak. They exploit or abandon the women or they bleat like sheep. Fe, ambitious, assimilated into the white culture, and perfectly groomed, is ashamed of her family. To reach her dream of middle-class respectability, she works overtime at a factory, where she contracts cancer from a chemical and dies. The beautiful Caridad, sexually promiscuous after her annulled marriage, is attacked and mutilated by several unidentified men. She uses spirituality to reconnect with the mysticism of her heritage, and she becomes a hermit, healer, and channeler. She falls in love with Esmeralda, a lesbian whose Mexican roots mystically connect them. The two die holding hands, leaping from a mesa, called by a Mexican deity. Unlike Fe, who was “plain dead,” they achieve a mythological status, “living forever . . . in the safe, dark earth.” Esperanza, a television journalist and the only college-educated sister, is kidnapped and killed in Saudi Arabia. Emotionally connected to the Native American church, her visionary form converses with Caridad. La Loca, the youngest and most visionary, dies of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) even though she has had no physical contact with people other than her mother and sister since the age of three.

Sofia endures. Abandoned by Don Domingo, her gambling husband who returns twenty years later, she raises her daughters alone. Not deterred by her tragedies, she establishes herself as mayor and organizes cooperatives to improve the economic stability of the impoverished town. The novel ends with her founding of the Society of Mothers of Martyrs and Saints as a tribute to La Loca. This act takes a sardonic twist as the society develops into a touristy purveyor of kitsch. Consistent with the oral tradition, the novel relates cherished Hispanic traditions. As a scathing commentary of the complexities of the Chicana existence, it also portends cultural decline.

Bibliography

Alarcón, Norma, et al., eds. Chicana Critical Issues. Berkeley, Calif.: Third Woman Press, 1993. This text focuses on issues of identity and difference and includes critical essays on chicana literature that will broaden the context for So Far from God. The bibliography by Lillian Castillo-Speed, “Chicana Studies: An Updated List of Materials, 1980-1991,” is currently the most comprehensive in print.

Castillo, Ana. “A Conversation with Ana Castillo.” Interview by Elsa Saeta. Texas College English 26 (Fall, 1993): 1-6. In this interview, Castillo discusses her development as a writer, her literary influences, and her philosophical perspectives. Helps to place Castillo’s work in context by providing insights into the personal, philosophical, and political concerns that define her work.

Castillo, Ana. “Massacre of the Dreamers—Reflections on Mexican-Indian Women in the U.S.: Five Hundred Years After the Conquest.” In Critical Fictions: The Politics of Imaginative Writing, edited by Philomena Mariani. Seattle: Bay Press, 1991. In this critical essay, Castillo discusses some of the theoretical perspectives that influence her work. Castillo defines her poetics and examines Chicana writers’ relationship to their culture, their language, and their history.

Castillo, Ana. A MELUS Interview: Ana Castillo, by Elsa Saeta. MELUS 22 (Fall, 1997): 133-149. In this extended conversation, Castillo discusses her writings, particularly the feminist perspective of her novels, and provides information about her career. The interviewer calls her “one of the most articulate, powerful voices in contemporary Chicana literature.”

Delgadillo, Theresa. “Forms of Chicana Feminist Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God.” Modern Fiction Studies 44 (Winter, 1998): 888-889. Explores Castillo’s characterization of Chicanas as a group of passive people who become victims of oppression and a patriarchal church, and their eventual emergence from subjugation.

Herrera-Sobek, Maria, and Helena Maria Viramontes, eds. “Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature.” The Americas Review 15, nos. 3 and 4 (1987). This special double issue of the literary journal includes chicana literature and criticism. Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano’s essay “Chicana Literature, from a Chicana Feminist Perspective” discusses the relationship between chicana feminist literature and political activism in the community. This essay will give the reader of So Far from God a better understanding of Castillo’s feminist perspective.

Horno-Delgado, Asunción, et al., eds. Breaking Boundaries: Latina Writing and Critical Readings. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. This volume contains feminist criticism of Latina writers. The authors’ introduction analyzes Latina literature as an expression of cultural heritage and historical circumstances not as a search for identity. The authors also include a selected bibliography of works by and criticism of Latina writers. The article on Castillo by Norma Alarcón, “The Sardonic Powers of the Erotic in the Work of Ana Castillo,” although written before the publication of So Far from God, gives the reader some insights into the author’s work; in particular, Alarcón places the sexual ironies in Castillo’s poetry and her first novel within the context of the cultural tradition of the chicana.

Kingsolver, Barbara. “Desert Heat.” Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 16, 1993, pp. 1, 9. Kingsolver’s review suggests that the novel could be “the offspring of a union between One Hundred Years of Solitude and General Hospital: a sassy, magical, melodramatic . . . delightful novel.” Kingsolver discusses the novel’s strengths specifically: the characters and their development, the narrative voice, and Castillo’s venture into North American Magical Realism.

Lanza, Carmela D. “Hearing the Voices: Women and Home and Ana Castillo’s So Far from God.” MELUS 23 (Spring, 1998): 65-79. Lanza’e essay compares Castillo’s book to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, identifying So Far from God as a “postmodern inversion” of Alcott’s novel. Both novels deal with the relationships between four sisters, but Castillo’s book is “infused with political resistance” where women of color have an opportunity to grow spiritually and politically.

Limón, José E. “La Llorona, the Third Legend of Greater Mexico: Cultural Symbol, Women, and the Political Unconscious.” In Between Borders: Essays on Mexicana/Chicana History, edited by Adelaida R. Del Castillo. Encino, Calif.: Floricanto Press, 1990. Limón’s essay focuses on the three women who dominate Mexican culture: La Malinche (Hernan Cortez’s interpreter and mistress), the Virgen de Guadalupe (Mexico’s patron saint), and La Llorona (the Weeping Woman). This scholarly article will acquaint the reader with the complex and interrelated symbolism of the three women.

Mirandé, Alfredo, and Evangelina Enriquez. La Chicana: The Mexican American Woman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. The first book published on chicanas, it gives a comprehensive historical and sociological perspective on Mexican American women. The first chapter includes an overview of legendary female figures in Mexican history, folklore, and mythology (some of whom are referred to in So Far from God). There is also the chapter “Images in Literature,” which looks at the stereotypical images of Mexican women as portrayed by Anglo writers in the nineteenth century, followed by a discussion of contemporary chicano and chicana writers.

Walter, Roland. “The Cultural Politics of Dislocation and Relocation in the Novels of Ana Castillo.” MELUS 23 (Spring, 1998): 81-97. Walter addresses the politics of dislocation and relocation as a “key aspect of interacting social and cultural practices and ideological discourses” in Castillo’s novels.