Call Me Maria

The rising action of Call Me María is manifested in a variety of ways, as María navigates a barrage of increasingly complex interactions. The narration of the story takes place chronologically, so María has now been in New York for a while and presumably speaks English even more fluently than before. Additionally, she has now been apart from her mother for several months, and this growing distance is reflected in the topics of her latest letters to her mother. Most significantly, María’s unsent letter reflects her growing realization that Mami will probably never move to New York. This understanding underpins the next scenes of the novel as María navigates the city in a more detached, independent way. As her immersion in the patchwork culture of New York intensifies, she also encounters two distinctly racist experiences: one at the drugstore and one at school. In both, she is forced to maneuver around other peoples’ assumptions and stereotypes. Rather than reacting with anger, however, María chooses to incorporate these upsetting moments into her writing as a poet. Even when in the midst of each encounter, she emphasizes her own use of language. In the drugstore, she arranges strands of hair into a question mark, and in science class, she repeats words from the class several times before the end of the section. In this way, she finds subtle methods of making statements and regaining a small measure of dignity in situations of which the outcomes are largely beyond her control. Throughout María’s processing of these exchanges, Mami and Papi are notably absent, and it is clear that María must stand alone as she learns to navigate the complex social landscape that now surrounds her.

After dealing with the racist manager at the drugstore, María writes a poem entitled “Crime in the Barrio,” yet the subject of the poem illustrates a different kind of perceived theft. This creative counter to her experiences highlights María’s development as both a young person and a budding writer. This is the first poem in which María includes the statement “A Poem by María” underneath the title. In the poem itself, she uses the second-person point of view to further distinguish this piece from her previous narrative writing. The poem itself deals with the losses that María has experienced through immigration: her “second last name / gone missing” and her accent has become “less thick” (66-67). María even goes so far as to include an imaginary scene in which her personal losses are reported to the police, who tell her that no one knows who the culprit is and that they cannot help her. Given the recent suspicion she endured at the drug store, this sequence indicates a creative way of processing the injustice of the situation; by imagining a scenario in which her own, very real losses—of identity, childhood, and language—are duly documented by the police as an actual theft, María both transcends her experience at the drugstore and solidifies her poetic sense of self.

Because very few texts, films, or artists are mentioned in the novel, Ortíz Cofer’s inclusion of the iconic 1999 movie American Beauty is noteworthy. The film, which follows the internal evolution of an unhappy suburban father who goes through an unusual spiritual awakening, is both a critique of American culture and also a portrayal of a life that is very different than María’s. While María only sees American Beauty because it happened to be playing at the theater, her use of the ticket stub at the drugstore silently and eloquently critiques the crueler realities of American culture and questions the very assumptions that underlie the phrase “American beauty.” As is made clear in the science class scene, María is not someone who is considered beautiful by stereotypical US standards; to some of her classmates and teachers, her physical and cultural differences from the collective norms of American society render her forever “other” and exclude her from the dominant understanding of beauty. Coupled with these personal encounters, María’s intense dislike of the film represents a rejection of such racist ideals of beauty as well as a deliberate separation from the kind of American dream that suburbia might represent. In later sections of the novel, María will emphasize the beauty that she sees in both herself and her neighborhood.

Music also remains an important motif throughout the novel. Songs are one of the most consistent aspects of María’s memories and connections with her family members. In different scenes throughout her childhood, she dances with Mami, reflects on Papi’s musical performances, and goes to see a musical with Abuela. For María and her family, music has the ability to transform and shape, and this dynamic is most dramatically manifested through María’s use of salsa to help her friend Uma to feel better.