What makes a house a home?

For me, it's photos of my ancestors, anything to do with La Virgen de Guadalupe, and of course, food - pupusas, menudo, yucca frita... But I got off-topic.

Houses can be much more than just a place to decorate, sleep, and eat your mom's empanadas.

Hi!

I'm Curly Velasquez, and this is Crash Course Latin American Literature.

[THEME MUSIC] A person's home can tell you a lot about them.

Their art, their knickknacks, the way they arrange the furniture - it can all give you hints about their innermost self.

So it makes sense that in literature, where characters live can be key to who they are.

But not only that!

Houses in Latin American literature are portals into diverse identities, cultures, and even political conflicts.

The trick is knowing how to read them that way.

Let's look at Sandra Cisneros's 1984 novel, "The House on Mango Street."

It tells the story of twelve-year-old Esperanza Cordero and her family in a working-class Chicago neighborhood.

Having grown up in an apartment, Esperanza is thrilled to put down her roots in her family's new home.

"I knew then I had to have a house," she says.

"A real house.

One I could point to."

But her family's dilapidated house is not the vibe.

And also, it's not really about the house.

Or, at least: not only.

See, Esperanza's discomfort in her house mirrors her discomfort with her own identity.

Like Cisneros herself, Esperanza is Chicana, which means she comes from a Mexican family but was born in the U.S.

So her identity exists somewhere between the two places and cultures.

She tells us, "At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth."

Like the house on Mango Street, Esperanza's Spanish name feels like the wrong fit for the person she wants to be.

On top of all that, Esperanza inherited her name from her great-grandmother - but she doesn't want to inherit the life her great-grandmother lived.

She was married against her will as a teenager - a lack of agency based on her gender.

And when Esperanza imagines this, she pictures her ancestor trapped within the walls of her home: "She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow."

Notice how Esperanza makes the connection between her great-grandmother and countless other women looking out their windows.

With this inside-looking-out image, she's evoking a long-standing association between houses and homes with women and femininity.

And by rejecting her house, Esperanza is also rejecting her picture of traditional femininity.

Throughout the book, the house on Mango Street literally hangs over Esperanza's head as she contemplates all the pieces of her identity and who she wishes to become.

By the end of the novel, a now fourteen-year-old Esperanza finds a new way to define herself: as a storyteller.

Her writing lets her escape from the house's grasp and create a new, more comfortable "home in the heart."

She knows someday she'll grow up and leave for real - but she also recognizes that the house will always be a part of her story.

Now, houses in literature don't only represent our personal identities.

They can also represent larger political and national identities, too.

And I'm not just talking about sticking a sign in your yard to endorse Dolly Parton for president.

Though anyone who gives free books to kids has my vote.

Let's get the Curly Notes on Isabel Allende's 1982 novel "La Casa de los Espíritus," "The House of the Spirits," which uses the house as a symbol to address the politics of her native Chile.

Isabel Allende is no stranger to politics.

Her father's cousin, Salvador Allende, was the President of Chile until he was assassinated by Augusto Pinochet's coup and her family was forced to flee the country.

So, she knew firsthand the challenges of sharing this house we call a nation- especially when our fellow citizens and leaders... aren't always the best roommates.

"The House of the Spirits" focuses on the Trueba family, who live in an unnamed country usually understood to be Allende's own Chile.

And the action moves between not just one house, but two, as a way of portraying the conflicting political perspectives in Chile at the time.

The "big house on the corner" is built for the Trueba matriarch, Clara, by her husband Esteban.

Clara represents the liberal left-wing, preaching ideals of equality, justice, and respect for everyone.

She presides over the big house, which is filled with students, artists, spiritualists- and even a few literal spirits.

Sounds kinda like my house, to be honest.

Esteban, on the other hand, is a wealthy, right-wing senator who exploits his workers, hits his wife, rigs elections through threats and coercion, and is just generally an all around bummer of a guy.

While his wife presides over the family home, Esteban's domain is Tres Marías, a hacienda in the countryside, which he runs like a dictator.

So the vibes of both houses are very different - even down to the design.

Clara constructs a world of freedom and imagination with long, twisting passageways and whimsical stairways to nowhere, while Esteban furnishes the Tres Marías with heavy, severe furniture that mirrors his politics.

But the family drama doesn't stop with the blueprints - and let me tell you, it's juicy.

Just like houses are often handed down through generations, for the Truebas, political tensions are handed down, too.

Esteban's grandson inherits his grandfather's politics and violent tendencies.

He goes on to become a police officer and later a colonel, playing a key role in torturing liberal revolutionaries - including his own cousin, Alba.

And you thought you and your primos had beef!

Alba, in contrast, carries on her grandmother Clara's liberal traditions.

After the conservative party seizes control of the government through a military coup, Alba uses the twisting passageways and secret doors of her grandmother's house to harbor socialist fugitives.

Notice how purposeful Allende is about placing her female characters right in the middle of the nation's political drama.

She even starts off the novel by introducing us to Clara's older sister, Rosa, who is all things traditionally feminine - graceful, beautiful, obsessed with romance novels, and on her way to embroider the largest tablecloth known to man.

As you do.

But then tragedy strikes: Rosa dies after drinking poisoned brandy meant for her politician father.

From that moment on, Allende shows us that - despite their exclusion from formal political leadership - women affect and are affected by politics, in the sphere of the home and beyond.

I won't spoil the book's ending for you, but let's just say there's hope - for the Trueba family and for Chile.

Now that focus on family [phone buzzes] Oh, it's my mom.... "Mom.

Sí.

¿Y qué pasó con la vecina?

¡No!

*jazz music* That was good and juicy!

Like I was saying, that focus on family brings me to my last example.

Families aren't always a husband, a wife, and 2.5 kids.

They can look a lot of different ways.

And literature helps to broaden the picture of what home and family life can be.

Argentine writer Camila Sosa Villada explores a broad view of family in her 2019 novel "Las Malas," "Bad Girls."

It follows a group of trans women who find community in "a large, pink, two-story building that looked a little run-down but welcomed them with open arms."

This "fabled pink house" in Córdoba, Argentina is run by 178-year-old Tía Encarna - picking up on some magical realism vibes?

And it serves as a landing place for young women who have been turned away by their biological families.

At the pink house, the women find sisters in their housemates, and an auntie in Tía Encarna.

And when Tía Encarna finds an abandoned infant in the park and brings him home, he, too, becomes part of their family.

But despite the safety they find in each other, the residents still face the dangers of the AIDS epidemic and their transphobic society.

As the novel goes on, the condition of Tía Encarna's pink house mirrors their own: becoming vandalized, choked by vegetation, and falling into disrepair.

In this way, the house itself becomes a reflection of the women's ongoing plight.

In Sosa Villada's words, the pink house is "the queerest boardinghouse in the world."

One that complicates our preconceived notions about home, family, and belonging.

In literature, like in life, houses can hold all the nooks and crannies of who we are as people, cultures, and nations.

And in some ways, sitting down to read a book is a little like an invitation into an author's home.

So we can all become chismosos!

You can peer out the window of Sandra Cisneros's childhood home, meet Isabel Allende's family of politicians and revolutionaries, or stay up late talking with Sosa Villada and her friends.

And when you're done visiting, you can say your goodbyes, close the book, and return to your own house... with your own family drama... but also a new perspective about how other people live.

Personally, I can't wait to get back to my mom's empanadas.

Next time, we're diving even deeper into family bonds.

See you then.