The Thinking Self and Discourse of Love Lead to Self-Knowledge in Iris Gomez’s Try to Remember

ABSTRACT

In Try to Remember (2010), author Iris Gomez explores the main character Gabriela’s coming-of-age story through philosophic introspection. As a young immigrant from Cartagena, Colombia, Gabriela helps her family thrive in the United States; the most taxing circumstance in this endeavor is her father’s mental illness. Nevertheless, Gabriela acquires self-knowledge through reflection on her thinking self and personal examination of the discourse of love through her relationships. Her philosophic investigation includes address of concepts such as tabula rasa, standpoint epistemology, the Greek classification system of love, and ontology. Philosophers and theorists such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Mariana Ortega, and Ofelia Schutte will be applied to analysis of this novel. Ultimately, the character of Gabriela finds freedom as central and critical in her own definition of Latinx immigrant woman subjectivity.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. All italicized words and phrases in the quotations can be found in the original text.

2. As terminology in the field changes, “Latina” or “Latino/a” will be used when it is found in or indicated by the original source material; however, in the essay’s analysis, the more current term “Latinx” will be used. Also, all quotations from the novel will be cited hereafter by page number only.

3. As of June 2022, there are no searchable works about Iris Gomez’s Try to Remember listed in the MLA International Bibliography, Project Muse, and JSTOR databases.

4. Of course, works such as Ramón Saldívar’s Chicano Narrative: Dialectics of Difference (1990), Juan Flores’s Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (1992), Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s Life on the Hyphen (1994), and the early critical articles of Silvio Torres-Saillant described individual national identity and culture for the benefit of understanding the literatures of the Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban-American, and Dominican-American communities respectively, but specific attempts at defining a holistic conception of Latino/a identity and culture for the same purpose initiated only with texts such as those written by Christian and McCracken. People with heritage ties to Central and South American nations are now part of the evolving delineation of the larger US Latinx (previously known as Latino/a) community.

5. In Psychology Today, Dr. Neel Burton defines three additional types of love: ludus (playful or uncommitted love); pragma (practical love founded on reason or duty and one’s long-term interests-as in arranged marriages); and philautia (self-love which can be healthy or unhealthy). For the purpose of this essay, only the four main types addressed in Lara’s quotation will be examined primarily; although, this fifth type of love will be suggested again by the end of the novel and thus analyzed by the essay.

6. In particular, white and upper-class Cubans fared better when immigrating to the United States; Black and lower-class Cubans still encountered difficulties in the immigration process.

7. In reader reviews of this novel on multiple book-selling websites, many critical comments maintain that Gomez mishandles the description and diagnosis of schizophrenia through lack of accurate details and descriptors; however, I would contend that the larger points made about the thinking self and discourse of love for the Latinx immigrant woman subject still make this text a worthwhile reading experience.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan C. Méndez

Susan C. Méndez received her doctorate from the University of California, Riverside and now is a Professor of Multi-Ethnic American literature in the Department of English & Theatre at The University of Scranton. Specifically, her research addresses feminist discourse and Latinx literary texts, namely novels.