Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Orginal Publication Date
1990
Journal Title
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Volume
10
Issue
ess/vol10/iss1
First Page
59
Last Page
60
Abstract
This volume continues in the same vein as Governor Glu Glu, but Ulibarri here delves even more deeply into the world of fantasy. Many of the eleven stories in El Condor are like sugar-coated medicine: the sweetness prepares the reader for the lesson which comes in the form of a moral at the end. "The Man Who Didn't Eat," for example, is a tale of the scientific creation of a man who is vegetable Frankenstein's monster, with parts taken from many plants. The creature in Ulibarri's story is benevolent; as a result of his superhuman effort to save his neighbors from a plague to which he is immune, he misses his nutritional injection and dies. Ulibarri concludes with his lesson: "No one ever knew, neither in the lay world nor in the scientific world, that a living miracle had lived among us. We do not know how to recognize the miracles that surround us." In "A Man Who Forgot," the author presents a self-conscious story about a man who remembers only what is good. The moral here is, "how beautiful life would be if we could erase from our memory all that is ugly, and remember only the beautiful and the good."
Rights
Copyright, ©EES, The National Association for Ethnic Studies, 1990