43 pages • 1 hour read
Judith Ortiz CoferCall Me Maria
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Cultural Context: The Experiences of Puerto Rican People in the US
As a novel that intentionally spans two different places and cultures, Call Me María is best understood as being specifically about the Puerto Rican experience, both in Puerto Rico and in the mainland United States. Even in her teenage years, María already has a sharp understanding of the ways in which Puerto Rican identity is felt and expressed by the adults around her, as well as how it feels to transcend the cultural boundaries between two places. The relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States is a complicated one and has historically been impacted by colonialism and racism on the part of the United States government. While María’s understanding does not directly reflect this dynamic, Ortíz Cofer portrays María’s experiences in a way that addresses how Puerto Rican identity has been impacted by the United States’ colonization of Puerto Rico. This element of the story is best represented by María’s complicated feelings about language and her family members, who each have different relationships to and feelings about the English language. Ortíz Cofer also emphasizes María’s pride in her Puerto Rican identity, especially in the face of conflicting belief systems about whose languages and identities should be most valued in the United States.
Ortíz Cofer’s portrayal of María’s parents also illustrates an important tension specific to Puerto Rican culture: the divide between Puerto Rican people who live on the island (and primarily speak Spanish) and Puerto Ricans who have moved to the United States and speak a mixture of Spanish and English in order to assimilate into a different cultural climate. Through María’s perspective, Ortíz Cofer shows the complexities of navigating not one, not two, but three different cultures as a result of having parents who claim these different identities. María has to navigate between her father’s dual US and Puerto Rican identity and her mother’s singular Puerto Rican identity while forging a new path for herself that is a blend of the two.
Genre Context: Blending Verse, Prose, and the Epistolary Form
The structure of Call Me María weaves a unique tapestry of letters, poems, journal entries, and more traditional prose, and the balance between these narrative styles is highlighted by María’s own descriptions of the ways in which the various genres are important to storytelling. The decision to write the novel in this nontraditional way reflects Ortíz Cofer’s varied interests as an author. By shifting between genres, the author critically addresses the ways that memory and story can be documented in writing, and she also challenges the more customary narrative structures, crafting a novel that defies genre in order to tell María’s story in a unique way.
Call Me María is also written in a way that allows the interwoven genres to reflect María’s varied interests in the multifaceted functions of language. The shifts between letters, poems, and stories thus serve as a mirror to reflect María’s own shifts between English, Spanish, and Spanglish, which she does intentionally to portray her complex cultural experiences. For teenage readers of the novel, Ortíz Cofer is creating a new paradigm to allow young people to express themselves more fully and manipulate language to more accurately describe their experiences. Although the novel is a purely fictional text, it nonetheless deals with real-world scenarios and themes to which many young people can relate; overall, the novel encourages young people to tell stories in ways that reflect the uniqueness of who they are.
Social Context: Socioeconomic Status and Immigrant Experiences
The social context of Call Me María is a critical aspect of the novel’s construction. María’s experiences in Puerto Rico and New York City are circumscribed by multiple social factors: ethnic background, native language, and socioeconomic status. In New York, María is frequently confronted by aspects of her new social status. Her father is the building superintendent, so his rent is covered by his caretaking of the property. This arrangement implies that Maria’s father lacks financial stability. While María doesn’t often reference the amount of money her family has, she rarely has access to new or expensive things. She also reflects at times on the financial circumstances of her neighbors, each of whom struggles differently with navigating the economic system in the United States.
In addition to reflecting the experience of a low-income family, María’s narrative represents a distinct portrayal of the immigrant experience in the United States. Her descriptions of her different teachers and classes at school generally reflect her observations about both American culture and how she is treated by her peers, thus developing the theme of Navigating School as an Immigrant. Her closest friends are also immigrants; María describes how she and her friends are viewed as different from those students who are native English speakers and have grown up in the United States. Additionally, María reflects on her mother’s choice to stay in Puerto Rico as opposed to Papi’s choice to live in the United States. As María’s reflections play out in the multifaceted narrative styles, the author forces her readers to confront the complex realities of people who choose to emigrate to another place, especially one that is less than kind to immigrants.
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