Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun

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Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun (eBook) Pub. Date: 11/15/2010 Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
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Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun (New Edition) Pub. Date: 2/15/2012 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
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Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun Pub. Date: 11/15/2010 Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.

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Overview

It began with some graffiti on a wall: A toda madre o un desmadre. Liza Bakewell was in Mexico doing research for her PhD, and although she thought her Spanish was fluent, she had never seen the expression before. When she asked what it meant, she was told that it wasn't proper for a woman to use those words.

Intrigued with the way Mexicans shape their language and how language in turn shapes them, Bakewell developed a long list of madre expressions over the years. How can me vale madre mean worthless and ¡que padre! mean marvelous? Why does madre mean whore as much as virgin?

Her study is part memoir, part travelogue, and part investigation into a culture and its language.

"¡Padrísimo! No sooner does Liza Bakewell take the helm than it becomes obvious how much joy and enlightenment might come from the study of language."--Ilan Stavans, author of Spanglish and general editor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Meandering from the technical to the trivial and displaying a tendency to fulminate redundantly about sexism, Bakewell, a linguistic anthropologist at Brown University, examines Mexican Spanish "under a microscope" to dissect the many idioms demeaning "la madre" in "the land of mother worship." More memoir than monograph, the book describes Bakewell's fixation on this madre paradox and her interest in interactions between culture and language. Friends serve as guides to Mexican slang. Men warn her what she, as a female, may not say (e.g., desmadre, a disaster), while women tell her that girls are taught to aspire to the purity of the Virgin Mary, even though, once married, a bride is transformed into Eve, "the sinner." Most interesting when tackling the question of why "ninety-nine amigas plus el one amigo resulted in los one hundred amigos," Bakewell cites academics and acquaintances to show that "mental perceptions of objects are influenced by grammatical genders." The account of her linguistic journey wanders through such topics as "Wedding," "Love," and "Back to Church," to a weak conclusion: to her, Mexican "madre" slang is "still an enigma." (Nov.)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393076424
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 11/15/2010
Pages: 222
Sales rank: 1,208,007
Product dimensions: 5.80 (w) x 8.40 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Liza Bakewell

Liza Bakewell is a linguistic anthropologist at Brown University.

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ReadingBooksRocks

Posted December 9, 2010

Highly Recommended; Great Holiday Gift, for Mom

This is both a hilarious and intelligently written book, apt to bounce you along with its animated, poetic and conversational prose. One does not have to speak Spanish to enjoy this book, but love language and enjoy pondering the way language works in our lives, it's relationship to reality, and how we see the world. Much of the book deals with gender and language, how culture and society "gender-ize" the language and what impact that has on speakers' perceptions. The book is a journey through the Spanish language, especially in Mexico, although it goes into other areas as well. The intriguing part of the book is to discover that in Mexico "madre" the word for mother is a swear word, to be uttered very, very carefully, if at all. That struck me as amazing. All in all, a great read, and also short, just over 200 pages, something I appreciate because I have kids and commitments and like to read books in one sitting if possible,or big chunks of them that way. Fit in my purse. I gave it to my mom when I finished. And I bought a number to give away for the holidays. The cover is perfect, coincidentally perfect for the holidays, too.
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