White Space by Jennifer de Leon
Writer Jennifer de Leon’s award-winning collection of essays spans two decades and details her coming of age, and burgeoning awareness of herself, as a Guatemalan American woman.
THE PREMISE: De Leon’s parents left Guatemala for the United States in the 1970s, but she grew up deeply influenced by their love for their home country. In her twenties, she’d travel to her parents’ homeland in an attempt to connect with it, and with a part of herself she knew she needed to get to know. The book sends us to Boston; to Connecticut, where de Leon gets her college degree; to Paris, where de Leon studied abroad; to Nigeria, where she was an intern for the U.N; to Guatemala. Throughout, her observations veer from the very personal to the global.
THE SETTING: De Leon’s book is divided into three parts: “Before,” “Guatemala,” and “After.” Throughout, there’s a sense of the true essay, in which the writer tries to feel her way to a conclusion she’s not sure she’s ready to reach yet. And indeed, as de Leon’s narratives moves from country to country, always anchored by what she’s discovering about her own sentiments toward her heritage and her desire to understand more, we get the sense that these essays are pieces of a puzzle that de Leon is actively trying to put together as we read through her work.
This overall effect is a testament to both de Leon’s skill in the art of essay and the compelling nature of the parts of herself she chooses to reveal to us. Whether she’s struggling to match up her own definition of “work” with what she knows of the labor her parents put in; telling us about her borderline obsession with gyms no matter where she is in the world; or giving us some much-needed background on Guatemala’s history from a first-hand perspective, de Leon writes honestly and compellingly about her misgivings and her confusion.
A big part of the book’s effect stems from de Leon’s careful choice of anecdote. This results in a sense of extended metaphor; her writings about her time in Guatemala, for instance, are an apt illustration for working through her sentiments about what meaningful work means to her. In a section about a long hike she takes to get to understand more of Guatemala’s history, she writes, “Gerardo even had the same backpack he used during the war...in his hand, a machete. I wanted to see what it felt like...I tried to cut a stem off a tree. Fail. I tried again...I stabbed the machete into the soft ground; it reached my knee in height. I wasn’t graceful with it. It didn’t know me.”
IN THE END: De Leon’s journey to reconcile her heritage with her present reality, and her struggle to fit in, is a familiar meta-narrative for any immigrant or child of immigrants. But what’s truly gripping about White Space for this reader is her lens on her parents’ presence in her life throughout the book, and the way it provides a sharp backdrop against which de Leon can tell us her own story of becoming.
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