A Place Where the Sea Remembers

1. A Place Where the Sea Remembers begins with one family's story and weaves itself through the village of Santiago and around the lifes of the many people who live there. As the novel unfolds, a landscape takes shape at once simple and complex. Yet so much happens behind the scenes — does this add to the storytelling? Create a mood? How does Benitez show the complexity of life through the details of everyday living?
2. Remedios is the Spanish word for remedies. Remedios is also the name of one of the book's main characters. She is intricately woven into the book and the life of almost every character in Santiago. She is a wise woman — the soothing, calm center which counteracts many of the characters' tragedies. Why does she choose to live apart from the town? How does Remedios counsel a remedy to those who trudge up the hill for healing and preservation? What remedies does she herself seek? What does this character represent for you?
3. InA Place Where the Sea Remembers, the characters are confronted with many feminist issues: rape, abortion, single parenthood, and too much machismo. How is the "woman's lot" illustrated in the book? Discuss how class plays a part in both how a woman behaves and is treated. In particular, compare Chayo's life to Esperanza's — the life of dona Lina, Rafael's mother, to the doctor's wife.
4. In Mexico, indigenous spirituality and the Catholic Church are often at odds with one another. Still, many people choose to practice both. How does Benitez illustrate the difference between the two, and how are both important tothe Mexican culture? Is it possible to find a balance between them?
5. The stroke of fate is a recurrent theme ofA Place Where the Sea Remembers. How does fate show itself to all the characters and play a part in their stories? What choices do these characters make as a result of what fate has given them?
6. Death is a recurrent theme of the book. In the case of the fisherman, it is only after the loss of his wife that Cesar is forced to emotionally connect with his son. Why does it take the death of the woman in the family before Cesar reaches out to Beto and becomes, truly, his father and nurturer? And what of the death of Richard, Marta's son? Is this death ascribed to fate or would you say it is retribution for Marta's revenge against her sister?
7. The sea is the central metaphor inA Place Where the Sea Remembers. It is a witness to all the characters' stories. How does the sea influence Remedios' life? How do the elements of earth, fire, water, and air sustain her? How do they sustain you?
8. Tragedy affects the lives of almost every character in the book. Discuss the nature of tragedy and how tragedy is something we grow from. Are the book's characters transformed by tragedy? How so?
9. Remedios says "It is stories that save us." Do you agree with her assertion? How does storytelling restore and preserve a people and their culture?

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Sandra Benitez

"I spent my life moving between the Latin American culture of my Puerto Rican mother and the Anglo-American culture of my father. I was born on March 26, 1941 in Washington, D.C., one of a pair of identical twins. My sister died only a month after our birth. A year later my parents and I moved to Mexico where another sister was born. My childhood and early adulthood were spent in Mexico and El Salvador. When I think of those years, the images that come to me are awash in the color saffron: the Spanish language, the permeable scent of cedar and leather, the shimmering heat, the color of the women in the household, the stories they told, the lives they shared.

"In Latin America, I learned that life is frail and most always capricious, that people find joy in the midst of insurmountable obstacles, that in the end, it is hope that saves us.

"When I became a teenager, I was sent to live for three years on my paternal grandparents' farm in Northeastern Missouri, and this is where I attended high school. I was the first Latina the people there had ever known. Those years live for me in a pale blue light: the thin sheen the setting sun casts on the snow banks, the color of my father's eyes, the doleful bawl a cow makes when it has lost its calf, the back-breaking work that is the farmer's lot.

"In Missouri, I learned that life is what you make it, and that satisfaction comes with a job well done, that in the end, it is steadfastness that saves us."

"I received my undergraduate and master's degrees from Northeast Missouri State University. Over the years I have been an English, Spanish, and Literature teacher at both high school and university levels. I have been a translator, and I have worked in the international division of a major training corporation. I have traveled extensively throughout Latin America. Since 1980, I have been a fiction writer and a creative writing teacher. I have two grown sons and I live with my husband in Minnesota."

"I came to writing late. I was thirty-nine before I gathered enough courage to begin. When I hear other writers talk about writing, I'm amazed by those who say they always knew they had to write. When I was a girl, I never wished to do it. Being a writer was something magical I never dreamed I could attain. But while growing up, I frequently had a book in my lap — and so I was linked even then to writing and to the spell that stories cast. I didn't know a writing life was lying in store for me. I had to live and grow before I caught the faint call. Since heeding the call, I've worked hard at being faithful to it, for writing is an act of faith. We must keep faith each day with our writing if we want to be called writers.

"Since I've been writing I've searched what's in my heart and its from that core that I write and not from what seems marketable. I am a Latina American. In my heart are stored the stories of my Latin American and Missourian heritage — of a childhood lived in Mexico and El Salvador. When I write, I have to suppress the knowledge that mainstream America often ignores the stories of 'the other America.' Over the years, I've learned to write from the heart, to persevere despite the setbacks of a host of rejections.

"In the end, I've learned these things about writing: its never too late to begin; we know all we need to know in order to do it; persistence and tenacity will take us all the way. There are angels on our shoulders, be still to catch their whisperings."

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