Thirteen Senses

thirteen senses is an interesting novel that traces that lives of author's parents who it appears experience rather turbulent times yet through it all, they stayed together. It is their fifty years together that offers some valuable lesions on love and trust and on the institution of marriage. The book is based on the lives of the Villasenor couple but it reads more like a guidebook on love and marriage. The book could have been subtitled, how to make a marriage last.

This is because there are some many pearls of marital wisdom interspersed in the novel that one wonders if there was anything else that the Mejicanos ever talked about apart from discussing psychology of men and women. The book opens with the author attending the 50th wedding anniversary of his parents where the couple is asked to repeat their marriage vows.

This sets the tone for the rest of the book as the author observes his parents on this auspicious occasion: " Sunlight streamed in through the large windows behind Salvador and Lupe as the priest continued his words. People's eyes filled with tears. This was a magic moment, where everyone in the room just knew that God's blessing was with them...This was the key of living between a man and a woman..

after fifty years of marriage to kiss and kiss again with an open heart and soul!" The author is not certain if it was love that kept his parents together for 50 years. "Was it love? Had it ever really been love?" He believes that trust probably played a bigger role in gluing this relationship than love.

"Trust, she could now see was, indeed, a very big word...maybe even larger than Love." This is because the author believes that there were so many occasions in his parent's adventurous life when her mother could have left her husband since he was engaged in a dangerous occupation. She could have felt betrayed and this could result in the death of what turned out to be a very strong relationship. But in those moments of despair, his mother Lupe didn't let her faith in her husband and God waver.

Rodriguez (2001) writes: "Thirteen Senses" is a powerful story of strength and love, hardship and pain. It follows the lives of Salvador and Lupe Villasenor, a young Mejicano couple living in Southern California in the 1920s. The author uses fact as the basis for some fiction, building on Salvador's and Lupe's lives to embellish their experiences. Salvador is a whiskey bootlegger who carries a gun and has no problem scaring the daylights out of his rivals in order to protect his territory.

Lupe is a beautiful, God-fearing girl with her virtue intact, her morals in the church-approved place and not a clue that her betrothed brews alcohol for a living." The two older women in the book, Margarita and Guadalupe, represent Indian wisdom that appears strange to a modern reader. However since Indian culture is certainly different from Anglo one, we need to read the book from the perspective of a Mexican Indian author.

The author is clear about the differences that exist between Indian and Anglo wisdom for he treats the latter condescendingly while reveres the former. On once occasion Victor Villasenor writes, "there is no way a person can talk in English about miracles and angels without sounding, well, kind of phony or holier than thou" thus highlighting lack of richness and wisdom in Anglo culture.

Western culture is again criticized when the author writes, "Listen to the priests about those matters that have to do with God, but not about women and children. What can a priest possibly know? The poor men live a very limited life." And this view is supported by Margarita who considers west a soulless culture saying that American doctors "only knew how to heal the body like a mechanic fixing a car." Another important theme in the book is money and how insignificant it really is.

As I mentioned above the book can easily be considered a guide to good marriage, this book certainly contains numerous astute observations regarding insignificance of material goods in our lives. The author tells us that despite lack of money, his parents were always happy and couldn't ever think of leaving each other. This means there was a force bigger than materialism that kept them together. Even though they faced some really hard times including the Depression, the couple refused to disintegrate.

Even with no money and many kids, the Villasenors stood by each other. This was because both Salvador and Lupe understood that money couldn't buy happiness and thus was simply immaterial to them. On one occasion, Salvador actually shows surprise upon hearing about a tragic incident where a farmer killed himself when he lost his savings.

He wonders how someone could take his own life simply because of money and he says, "Some of us live our whole life with having nothing!" To this his brother-in-law replies: "Among the gringos, most of their lives they've always had something, so nothing is something that they know nothing about." Lupe endorses similar beliefs and values and she pities those who don't know "how to be poor of purse, but rich of Heart.. All families see hard times. That's just part of la vida.

Despite sound narratives, the book suffers from various weaknesses. On some occasion, the two older women speak like modern day marriage counselors offering advice on different aspects of this sacred institution. Especially the analysis of men and women's psyches appears to be based on John Gray's books on relationships. For example on one occasion, Margarita advises her daughter to "remember that men are mineral...Women are vegetation.

That's why the two will always have difficulties." And further adds that men and women are so different that, "it's a miracle that they ever come together at.