MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

My Black Past recounts a story of a multi-ethnic family narrative that is multi-generational. My Black Past (2018) by Laura Esquivel is part of a trilogy of Como agua para chocoloate (1989). The novel opens with the main character, María going through some emotional and psychological period. The reader learns of this as the story begins with her at the psychologist. With a few flashbacks, the reader learns María has given birth to a dark shinned baby. The oddity of the birth she and her husband are described as white. Husband, Carlos has left her because of the shame of knowing that María has had an affair or the shame that the child is “Negro como el azabache.” (13). Or, perhaps of both; nonetheless, María’s family has also isolated her a cause of baby Horacio. Esquivel releases her new novel yet with recipe’s and magical realism toned down. The feature element in My Black Past appears to be raising a conscious awareness to Mexico’s racial background.

The novel seems to toy with opposites light/ dark, good/bad, positive/negative. Those on the left side of the slash being the culturally accepted norm or center. Those on the right side the disruptive elements. Does the word black in the title of the novel mean a negative in the culturally sense of the meaning or is the word simply a play of language in which the signifier is irrelevant to the signified. My Black Past contains many tittering opposites in addition to its profoundly feminine if not feminist narrative. Esquivel’s novel as her many others contests a logocentric world. This paper intends to explore the binary oppositions in relation to the feminine consciousness that is pervasive in the entire novel of My Black Past.