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Meet Josefina
Dec. 8th, 2012 12:09 amJosefina Montoya! She was the new American Girl when I was but a lass, and I remember the excitement of getting the new books and mooning over the beautiful illustrations. I found them enthralling: the rich turquoises, the yellow primroses, the pink hollyhocks bright against the rich red-brown adobe.
Josefina is the most artistic of the American Girls, at least in the series I’ve read so far. She’s fond of music and dancing and flowers (her aunt teaches her piano); her narration overflows with metaphors. The wind flaps her rebozo (a sort of shawl) around her, and it reminds Josefina of wings.
She’s quite a contrast to Kaya and Felicity and Caroline, all of whom are down to earth, impulsive, courageous types. (Well, Caroline is perhaps not impulsive. But spirited!)
One of the American Girl books’ great strengths, I think, is that they do have this range of heroines - not just from different places and time periods, but with different personalities. While it’s inevitable that a reader will have favorites, there’s no sense that we’re being set up to see one way of being an American girl as “right.”
This is echoed in the Josefina books themselves. Josefina has three sisters - have I mentioned how much I enjoy books about families of sisters? I have no sisters, so I have a rather rosy view of what it entails, I suppose. Maternal Ana (who is old enough that she has two children of her own), sensible Clara (who has a secret emotional side) and impetuous, extraverted Francisca (much more Felicity-like than Josefina herself) show alternative models of femininity than Josefina, but there’s not a sense that Josefina is best.
Josefina, indeed, is timid and shy. Her first reaction to trouble is to run away. Many of her storylines revolve around overcoming her everyday fears: of lightning, of a mean goat, of singing in public - and most of all, of forgetting her mother, who died a year before the books begin.
Josefina’s mother remains a vivid, living presence despite her death: Josefina and her three sisters are continually quoting her. When Josefina’s aunt teaches her to read, Josefina sees it chiefly as the means to write down the poems and songs her mother taught her. The main story that carries over the six books involves Josefina’s quest to find a new mother figure, and, once she has found her in her aunt Dolores, her mother’s sister, to keep her on the rancho.
This aunt, Dolores, is the most mysterious character in the book. Her backstory doesn’t quite add up. As the historical note at the end of the first book comments, it’s unlikely that Dolores would have remained unmarried so long - the historical notes, by the way, are where American Girl admits it if one of their plots is bunk.
But nonetheless! Dolores is Josefina’s mother’s younger - much younger - sister (but she can’t be too much younger, or else she wouldn’t remember Josefina’s mother as well as she does). She lived in Mexico City for the last ten years, and only just returned to New Mexico when the books begin.
Obviously (reading between the lines and speculating judiciously) Dolores was sent to Mexico City to find a match. Why didn’t that work out? She’s beautiful, she’s well-mannered and compassionate, she knows all the housework-y things, and she can play the piano. Tell me how she doesn’t get snapped up in months.
Was there a scandal? I briefly toyed with the vision of a duel, but really, it’s hard to make that fit into Dolores’s backstory. She’s just so cheerful and no-nonsense. No, I’m leaning toward “She nearly entered a nunnery, but at the last minute found she couldn’t.”
***
Next Saturday! Mark your calendars! I’ll be reviewing the Marie-Grace & Cecile series, about the friendship of two girls, one white and one black, during the cholera epidemic in 1853 New Orleans. I haven’t read them before, and I’m curious how American Girl deals with the racial issues inherent in the premise - and also the simple writely issue of alternating heroines. We shall see!
One preliminary note: going by the covers, the illustrations for this series are just awful. It looks like they rendered them digitally - badly. DO NOT APPROVE. American Girl illustrations are supposed to make you want to fall into their world!
Josefina is the most artistic of the American Girls, at least in the series I’ve read so far. She’s fond of music and dancing and flowers (her aunt teaches her piano); her narration overflows with metaphors. The wind flaps her rebozo (a sort of shawl) around her, and it reminds Josefina of wings.
She’s quite a contrast to Kaya and Felicity and Caroline, all of whom are down to earth, impulsive, courageous types. (Well, Caroline is perhaps not impulsive. But spirited!)
One of the American Girl books’ great strengths, I think, is that they do have this range of heroines - not just from different places and time periods, but with different personalities. While it’s inevitable that a reader will have favorites, there’s no sense that we’re being set up to see one way of being an American girl as “right.”
This is echoed in the Josefina books themselves. Josefina has three sisters - have I mentioned how much I enjoy books about families of sisters? I have no sisters, so I have a rather rosy view of what it entails, I suppose. Maternal Ana (who is old enough that she has two children of her own), sensible Clara (who has a secret emotional side) and impetuous, extraverted Francisca (much more Felicity-like than Josefina herself) show alternative models of femininity than Josefina, but there’s not a sense that Josefina is best.
Josefina, indeed, is timid and shy. Her first reaction to trouble is to run away. Many of her storylines revolve around overcoming her everyday fears: of lightning, of a mean goat, of singing in public - and most of all, of forgetting her mother, who died a year before the books begin.
Josefina’s mother remains a vivid, living presence despite her death: Josefina and her three sisters are continually quoting her. When Josefina’s aunt teaches her to read, Josefina sees it chiefly as the means to write down the poems and songs her mother taught her. The main story that carries over the six books involves Josefina’s quest to find a new mother figure, and, once she has found her in her aunt Dolores, her mother’s sister, to keep her on the rancho.
This aunt, Dolores, is the most mysterious character in the book. Her backstory doesn’t quite add up. As the historical note at the end of the first book comments, it’s unlikely that Dolores would have remained unmarried so long - the historical notes, by the way, are where American Girl admits it if one of their plots is bunk.
But nonetheless! Dolores is Josefina’s mother’s younger - much younger - sister (but she can’t be too much younger, or else she wouldn’t remember Josefina’s mother as well as she does). She lived in Mexico City for the last ten years, and only just returned to New Mexico when the books begin.
Obviously (reading between the lines and speculating judiciously) Dolores was sent to Mexico City to find a match. Why didn’t that work out? She’s beautiful, she’s well-mannered and compassionate, she knows all the housework-y things, and she can play the piano. Tell me how she doesn’t get snapped up in months.
Was there a scandal? I briefly toyed with the vision of a duel, but really, it’s hard to make that fit into Dolores’s backstory. She’s just so cheerful and no-nonsense. No, I’m leaning toward “She nearly entered a nunnery, but at the last minute found she couldn’t.”
***
Next Saturday! Mark your calendars! I’ll be reviewing the Marie-Grace & Cecile series, about the friendship of two girls, one white and one black, during the cholera epidemic in 1853 New Orleans. I haven’t read them before, and I’m curious how American Girl deals with the racial issues inherent in the premise - and also the simple writely issue of alternating heroines. We shall see!
One preliminary note: going by the covers, the illustrations for this series are just awful. It looks like they rendered them digitally - badly. DO NOT APPROVE. American Girl illustrations are supposed to make you want to fall into their world!
