Bitter Grounds

( 3 )

Overview

Bitter Grounds depicts the luxurious lives of the wealthy in Salvadoran society through the Contreras family, owners of a coffee plantation. Elena de Contreras travels to Europe with her daughter to select wardrobes, spends idle time at luncheons and teas with society friends, and supports her daughter in opening an expensive gift shop in town. Yet when betrayal rocks Elena's protected and pampered world, she reveals an iron will no one had glimpsed in her before. Their lives are a stark contrast to the lives of ...
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Overview

Bitter Grounds depicts the luxurious lives of the wealthy in Salvadoran society through the Contreras family, owners of a coffee plantation. Elena de Contreras travels to Europe with her daughter to select wardrobes, spends idle time at luncheons and teas with society friends, and supports her daughter in opening an expensive gift shop in town. Yet when betrayal rocks Elena's protected and pampered world, she reveals an iron will no one had glimpsed in her before. Their lives are a stark contrast to the lives of the coffee pickers, who must live a hard-scrabble existence in close proximity to the privileged elite.

Jacinta Prieto comes from such a background, and as housekeeper to the Contreras family, is privy to their innermost secrets. Jacinta has secrets of her own, including a love affair with a married man whose identity she risks all to conceal. By interweaving the stories of these women, Benitez draws dramatic differences and surprising parallels in their worlds, evoking their passions and revealing their hatred with amazing empathy.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher
"Grabs us at the most visceral level . . . Benitez's clear writing and considerable imagination enable her to make the political personal, luminous, and even comic."—Ms.

"An elegant epic . . . Benitez is a remarkable storyteller."—The Denver Post

"Packs an emotional punch . . . A compelling read."—The Boston Globe

"Explores passion, politics, love, death and betrayal in an intricately plotted mystery . . . Moving and lyrical."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

Library Journal
Centering on a letter that remains unopened for 26 years, Bentez's impressive saga follows the intertwined lives of three generations of Salvadoran women, the very rich and the very poor, friends and mothers and daughters, mistresses and servants and, finally, oppressors and victims and guerrillas. Their lives are played out against the backdrop of the ever-present radio soap-opera serial and the violence and corruption of the police state and civil war of 20th-century El Salvador. Bentez's prose is rich and fluid; one tastes and smells the world of Jacinta and Magda and their mothers and daughters. Like her first novel (A Place Where the Sea Remembers), this work is another welcome addition to the growing body of Latina literature. -- Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield College Library, McMinnville, Oregon
Library Journal
Centering on a letter that remains unopened for 26 years, Bentez's impressive saga follows the intertwined lives of three generations of Salvadoran women, the very rich and the very poor, friends and mothers and daughters, mistresses and servants and, finally, oppressors and victims and guerrillas. Their lives are played out against the backdrop of the ever-present radio soap-opera serial and the violence and corruption of the police state and civil war of 20th-century El Salvador. Bentez's prose is rich and fluid; one tastes and smells the world of Jacinta and Magda and their mothers and daughters. Like her first novel (A Place Where the Sea Remembers), this work is another welcome addition to the growing body of Latina literature. -- Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield College Library, McMinnville, Oregon
Kirkus Reviews
A luminously rendered second novel from the author of A Place Where the Sea Remembers (1993). Here, memorable pairs of mothers and daughters, caught up in the violence of recent Salvadoran history, live, love, and die for their passions. Benítez excels at capturing the textures of landscape, of class and period, and tells here a multi-generational saga shaped by politics but refreshingly free of polemic. Her upper-class characters are as fairly delineated as her peasants, as she tells the story of three generations of mothers and daughters whose lives intersect.

She begins with the infamous massacre of 1932, when Indian peasants suspected of being communists were slaughtered in the countryside. Thirteen-year-old Jacinta and her mother, Mercedes Prieto, are the only survivors of the attack in which their home is burned and Mercedes' husband killed. The two struggle to survive. When Mercedes begins working for wealthy landowners Elena and Ernesto de Contreras, however, life improves. Elena, a more enlightened product of her class and times, has her own sadness: On the eve of daughter Magda's wedding, she discovers Cecilia, her best friend, in bed with Ernesto. Hurt and angry, she vows never to see Cecilia again, which of course has repercussions in a story that suffers from foreshadowing. As the country experiences coups and falling coffee prices, the women try to live normal lives but find it impossible. Jacinta's first love is killed for being a union supporter; Alma, her daughter by a married man, becomes a revolutionary and dies in a botched kidnapping; and Magda, who employs Jacinta and raises daughter Flor, along with Alma, loses her husband and son-in-law in thesame kidnapping. Exile in Miami with a hint of a happy ending as the war heats up in the late '70s is the only option for Jacinta, Magda, and her family.

A sometimes schematic but always vivid chronicle of strong women facing the challenges of living in sad and violent times.

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780312195410
  • Publisher: Picador
  • Publication date: 8/15/1998
  • Edition description: REV
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 464
  • Sales rank: 259,440
  • Product dimensions: 9.00 (w) x 6.08 (h) x 1.27 (d)

Meet the Author

Sandra Benitez's first novel was A Place Where the Sea Remembers. She grew up in El Salvador, attended high school and college in Missouri, and now divides her time between Edina, Minnesota, where she teaches creative writing, and Mexico.

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Reading Group Guide

In 1932 El Salvador, Elena de Contreras and her husband Ernesto live the luxurious life of the very wealthy: regular trips to Europe and the United States, vast amounts of property, several gorgeous homes. In sharp contrast to their privileged existence, however, are the lives of the coffee workers they employ, who know only the hardships of back-breaking labor and low wages.

Mercedes Prieto, a Pipil Indian, comes from such a background. After losing her son and husband in the aftermath of a violent uprising against rich plantation owners, she flees with her daughter Jacinta to work in the household of Elena de Contreras.

Their arrival sets in motion a spellbinding story that takes three generations to unfold, as the two families become inexorably intertwined and their private turmoil mirrors the upheaval of the world around them.

Rich in history, tradition, color, and drama, Bitter Grounds is at once poetic and unsentimental, a page-turning saga that satisfies and entertains to the very last drop.

Discussion Questions:
1.How do the generations change, in their attitudes, beliefs, aspirations? Consider the world events surrounding these characters during the span of the novel, from 1932 to 1977: How are outside forces (economic depression, war, worker rebellion, civil unrest) reflected in their daily lives?

2. What is the significance of "Los Dos," the daily radio soap opera-both its content and the rituals of its audience?

3. Coffee provides a way of life in El Salvador. What is its role in the lives of these characters, symbolically and literally?

4. There are elements of magic realism to this story. Discuss examples of magic realism and their role in the story: do you think the departure from reality adds to or detracts from your belief in these events? Why do you think the author chose to include them? Other writers (Laura Esquivel, Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, to name a few) have also used this effect; if you've read their work, compare it to Bitter Grounds, or discuss if or why Latin American writing lends itself to magic realism. Do any North American writers try their hands at it?

5. "In years to come, when she thought of this moment, Elena would know that it was here, at this time-standing around the bend of Cecilia's lake house, the dying sun pouring itself into the blue bowl of the lake-that her life was forever divided into its own before and after." (page 130) Discuss other characters whose lives take equally dramatic and irreversible turns.

6. Bitter Grounds depicts the sharp differences between the lives of the rich and the poor. But the two classes also shared much in common. In what ways were they alike?

7. As the poor turned to the left for help politically, the rich turned to the right, and this polarization eventually led to a tragic civil war. Who do you think is to blame for the failure to find a middle ground?

8. Women writing about women are sometimes accused of doing so at the expense of their male characters. Discuss the role of men in this novel and how you feel they are portrayed.

9. What did you find interesting about mother/daughter relationships in Latin America? And how do these differ, if at all, from the way things work in our country?

10. In the final analysis, who were the winners and who were the losers in Bitter Grounds?

Sandra Benítez, in her own words:
What was your inspiration for Bitter Grounds?
How much comes from your own life experience?

I grew up in Mexico and El Salvador in the 1940's and 50's. Through my father, who was commercial attaché at the American embassy in El Salvador, we came to know and associate with the country's wealthy and powerful families. I went to school with their sons and daughters, many of whom are still my friends today.

On the other hand, we had several women in our house who had left their villages, children and families behind to come to work for us. Because they were all illiterate, they often asked me, even when I was just nine or ten, to read a letter from home or write one for them. Being a scribe made me privy to their true stories, and allowed me to see into the hearts of these women and made me conscious, even at a very early age, of the differences between their lives and ours.

I wrote Bitter Grounds to help myself and others better understand how the disparities between the rich and the poor polarized the left and right and led to the long, tragic civil war in El Salvador.

Also, much of Part Three in Bitter Grounds is based on the kidnapping by guerilla forces of my brother-in-law who was a surgeon in El Salvador in the 1970's. I flew there right after he was taken to lend comfort to my sister as we waited out the agonizingly slow negotiations. After his family paid a "war tax," he was set free. Others, even though their families paid such ransoms, were not so lucky.

You were 52 when your first novel, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, was published. Have you been writing all your life or did you come to it later and, if so, how?

I came to writing late. When I was 39, almost as a lark, I took a class in writing and all the stories that had impressed my heart began to bubble up. I was hooked and began to think of being a writer. I quit my job and began writing full time. It was an especially big risk, I think, because I was writing stories about "the other America," Latino stories that had not yet found a place in mainstream American literature. It took me 13 years to get my first book published.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Among those who have influenced my writing are Louise Erdrich and Isabel Allende for the richness of their storytelling skills, Ernest Hemingway for the deceptive simplicity of his language and Tim O'Brien for teaching me to go beyond what seems to have happened to explore what might have really happened.

You grew up between two cultures-Latin American and North American. How do you think this affects your writing?

I'm the daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a father from rural Missouri, I spent my first 15 years living outside the U.S.; then five more years moving back and forth between them; then finally moved to Missouri and then Minnesota where I now reside. As a result, I feel comfortable writing about either culture and I think I especially benefit from understanding how the people in each culture think about the other.

What has been your biggest surprise, if any, of being a published author?

That my readers sometimes find significant meanings in my stories that I never, until they told me about them, realized were there.

About the Author:
Sandra Benítez was born in Washington, D.C., and spent her childhood and early adulthood in Mexico and El Salvador. She then moved to the United States and received an undergraduate degree and a master's degree from Northeast Missouri State University. She published her first novel, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, when she was 52. She lives with her husband in Edina, Minnesota.

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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews
  • Anonymous

    Posted September 20, 2004

    A Top Book to Read

    A fabulous story, bringing recuerdos to anyone who was raised in a third world country (with or without radio or telenovelas in the middle of real life). An excellent book, moving characters, and brilliantly written. Everyone should read it.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 17, 2000

    The best Fiction book gift I ever got!

    Truly amazing tale, full of all emotions that last a long time. I read this book over a year ago and words still sound on my head, and from time to time, a just smile and think what a wonderful story this was..... 'that precise moment, that could change my future, and the future of the children of my children' ... something along the lines, as the main character is about to enter a room and find her husband cheating on her with her best friend... amazing story! I visited El Salvador to see some of the places where the story unfolds.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 2, 2010

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