And a Body to Remember With

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish at Laurentian
University.

This collection of short stories by the Chilean-Canadian writer Carmen
Rodriguez powerfully evokes the immigrant experiences of those driven to
exile by the 1973 military coup in Chile. The focus is on the female
experience of exile. Stories like “Black Hole,” “Accented
Living,” and “Breaking the Ice” wrestle with themes familiar to
every immigrant: the struggle of trying to live in two different
cultures, the challenge of “[leaving] everything behind and learn[ing]
to live again,” the clash of cross-culture generations. The long
shadow cast by the military coup is made horrifyingly explicit in
“3-D,” in which a woman commits suicide because she sees her
torturer on a Vancouver street and is sure he recognizes her. In “I
Sing, Therefore I Am,” a woman endures torture without betraying
anyone and lives to escape to Canada. “A Balanced Diet,” the final
story, ends in the victory of all the women who survived “because
obviously the military did not count on ... this immense desire to live,
this propensity to laughter.”

In these stories, Rodriguez conveys the political and personal
dimensions of exile with compassion, humor, and an unflinching eye. And
a Body to Remember With is a must-read.