The Temple of My Familiar

Content Warning: This book contains descriptions of racial and gender oppression, and the attendant isms and discriminatory language; rape and sexual violence; and substance addiction.

Carlotta is a Latin American woman. She is an only child, the result of a love affair between her parents Zedé and Jesús, who were fellow prisoners in their home country. Carlotta marries Arveyda, a rockstar, but leaves him after he has an affair with her mother, Zedé. Carlotta teaches literature at the same university as Suwelo and Fanny.

Carlotta’s journey is one of heartache and rootlessness. She doesn’t know anything about her mother’s past or her father’s identity. While growing up in America, she is divorced from her culture and has no family except her mother. She does find and create a family with Arveyda as an adult, but she loses him and her mother in one stroke because of their affair, which leaves Carlotta shattered. To soothe her pain, she indulges in a brief and superficial sexual relationship with Suwelo.

Carlotta’s healing begins after Arveyda tells her Zedé’s story. This helps her understand her mother’s pain and forgive her for her actions. It also helps Carlotta to make sense of her identity with respect to her culture and history.