First Impression: Gringo

I don't know why I am so attracted to these kinds of memoirs. I think that being Latin American I am always curious to see how someone from another country views us. We clash so much with other countries since we are "under developed" and they apparently have it all figured out, that their opinions have come to be known to be stuck up and imperialistic. I always want to find that foreigner who is not completely brainwashed into believing that I have anything to do with cocain or have never eaten hamburger ( true story). Gringo by Chesa Boudin, is a memoir about a foreigner that embraces Latin America for what it is and tries to make sense of it through first hand experiences.

After starting to read the memoir, Boudin has made a good first impression. He uses a reflective tone as he narrates what it is like to live in Guatemala. By having a reflective tone, he is able to give information as well as narrate his experience. As you read along about his stay with Doña Eugenia, he gives facts about the history of Guatemala and how the United States has been heavily involved. It is thanks to this tone that the reader can get a big picture on the situation and understand the narrators surrounding better.

There hasn't been much use of quotation in what I have read. Boudin sticks to narrating most of the information but when a quotation does appear it is in italics. I imagine this is this way because the dialogues he engages in are in another language. Boudin also states at the beginning of the memoir that "conversations and descriptions are approximately re-created on the page from memory" and since this is the case, he will probably keep them to a minimum.

There register in the memoir is informal. Boudin uses "I" a lot in the memoir but also uses spanish words, colloquialisms and contractions. This all demonstrates that he is in an informal register but the right one. If he wrote in a familiar register, it would be more a diary and not able to give the serious facts he gives from time to time. This register offers the perfect balance between familiar and formal for the reader to take what is being read, more seriously.