This reading is actually one of my favorites so far in this class! I really enjoy the story-like readings rather than the more informational and educational readings. Specifically, in this novel, I enjoyed the imagery used by Villaverde. As kind of a slow and bad reader (in my opinion), descriptive words and imagery in a reading really helps me picture what is happening rather than just reading boring old words that are strictly informational. I am also starting to enjoy the symbolism that is used by a lot of these writers and am able to pick up on it a little bit better as the semester goes on.
In Cecelia Valdes, there is a young mulatta girl named Cecelia Valdes (shocking) who is portrayed as beautiful and desirable. At a young age she was very cunning and liked to run off and cause trouble on the streets. She grew up in Cuban society without a mother and father in her life, therefore, she was living with her Grandmother. Throughout the whole story I was curious who her mother was and even more curious to whom her father was. And now that I now that her father is a wealthy slave-trader basically, I am even more curious how she would react to knowing that fact. I also wonder whether or not she will ever actually find out who her father is and meet him face-to-face. This actually just reminded me of Star Wars. Probably a really bad connection and they are completely different but Luke and Cecelia both did not know who their father was and both of their fathers are important, powerful, and wealthy people in society. However, Cecelia's father is obviously not a dark Lord... And many, many, many other differences. I cannot believe I just compared those two. I laugh at myself. I hope we get to read more short stories and story-like readings like this in the future. I really enjoyed how he describes Cuban society in the first few chapters along with how he describes Cecelia. It makes it easy for me to make a picture in my head of Cecelia and what society in Cuba was like at the time. In class we also talked about how Villaverde made Cecelia sounds like she lacks character and is very superficial. To be honest, I did not really pick up on that the first time I read it but I have really been enjoying the group discussions in class. I am getting better at sharing and questioning my ideas along with other people's ideas.
This was a really random blog and I apologize for the randomness. Basically, I really enjoyed Cecelia Valdes and hope to do more story-like readings for this class. Finally, is this story completely fictional and made up by Villaverde? Or was this based off of a real person and story? If so, who is the author in the story. Hopefully we will discuss this in class sometime because I do not know.
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