Invented Geographies: The Material and Immaterial Geopoetics of Sandra Cisneros’s “Pilón”

Abstract

AbstractCurrent scholarship on Sandra Cisneros's novel Caramelo (2002) has focused on the Reyes family's transnational migrant narrative and their explicit traversing of the US-Mexico border. However, Cisneros's final offering at the close of the novel, “Pilón,” has been excluded from these significant discussions. My essay focuses primarily on this cuento and how it relates to Caramelo as an (im)material part of the novel. I propose that “Pilón” partakes in a dialogic relationship to the novel proper—existing inside and outside of Caramelo through its location after the “fin” of the novel but within the binding of the text. By assessing the material and immaterial borders presented—I particularly explore three fundamental borders in “Pilón” (textual, geopoetical, and corporal)—I claim that “Pilón” presents an urgency in redefining a transnational border experience. Ultimately, I explore the imagining of the US-Mexico (m)otherland within “Pilón,” the limits of this imagining, and the (im)possibility of its geography through the nostalgic and spiritual analytic of the ofrenda.