When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep

by Sylvia Sellers-García

Overview

The award-winning debut novel that ?brings to mind the atmosphere and tension of Gabriel García Márquez.?( Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women)

Nítido Amán knows he was born in Guatemala, but he doesn't know why his family left. Raised in the States by his immigrant parents, they never talked about it. When Nítido loses his father to Alzheimer's disease, his despondent mother grows increasingly silent and Nítido realizes that his links to the past are disappearing.

Seeking answers, Nítido travels to Guatemala against his mother's wishes. Upon his arrival in the small town of Río Roto, he is mistaken for the new priest, and decides to play the part. From his parishioners, he catches tantalizing and frightening glimpses of the buried history he's aching to know. In a place shrouded in secrets, Nítido is at once determined and frightened to unearth the unnamed horrors it has seen.

With her elegant, hypnotic prose, this marks Sellers- García's arrival as a distinctive new voice in fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440629266
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/27/2007
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	331 KB

About the Author

Sylvia Sellers-García was born in Boston and grew up in the United States and Central America. A graduate of Brown University and a Marshall scholar at Oxford, she has interned at Harper’s and worked at The New Yorker; her fiction has been published in StoryQuarterly. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American History at the University of California, Berkeley.

What People are Saying About This

Katharine Weber

Mesmerizing. (Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women)

Hector Tobar

Mysteries unfold across time and space in this spell-binding journey into Latin Americas tragic past and unsettled present. With grace and verve, Sylvia Sellers-Garcia dissects the baroque heart of a rural village and finds the emotional tissue that binds it to one man's soul. (Hector Tobar, author of The Tattooed Soldier and Translation Nation)

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION

Raised in the United States by his immigrant parents, Nítido Amán is returning to his birthplace in Guatemala—before the traces of the past vanish completely in his mother’s silence, and his father’s recent death at the hands of Alzheimer’s disease.

Upon his arrival in the small village of Río Roto, Nítido is mistaken for the new local priest and immediately finds himself thrown into the violent politics, secrets and superstitions of the town. Charged with addressing the spiritual—and physical—needs of the seemingly cursed village, Nítido is confronted with the burdens and blessings of time and memory—while piecing together his own family’s history.

When the Ground Turns in its Sleep is a haunting portrait of one man’s journey to unearth his true identity, and to sow the seeds of healing among generations and cultures.

 

ABOUT SYLVIA SELLERS-GARCÍA

Sylvia Sellers-García was born in Boston and grew up in the United States and Central America. A graduate of Brown University and a Marshall scholar at Oxford, she has interned at Harper’s and worked at The New Yorker; her fiction has been published in StoryQuarterly. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American History at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Nítido’s initial reasons for his journey to Guatemala were connected to discovering his ancestral identity and to see for himself the landscape and culture so beautifully outlined in his father’s journals. But what develops as his reasons for staying in the village, especially as violence and suspicion tighten their grip on Río Roto and the neighboring villages?
 

Why might those who were aware of or encountered the truth about Nítido’s identity—like Xinia, who was able to translate Nítido’s letters, or Tomas, who received the bishop’s apologetic letter—have chosen to remain silent and allow the events of the story to unfold?
 

What consequences might have occurred if Nítido had revealed his true identity—as a school teacher and not a priest—to the townspeople of Río Roto upon his arrival? What do you think he found out based solely on his assumed station?
 

Apprehensively Nítido performs his first act as a priest—giving a local woman her last rites—but almost instantly a calling inside of him is awakened by the beauty of the moment, and of the woman’s faith. Why do you think Nítido decides to carry through with the act? What were the advantages of assuming this role for the community? Any negative results?
 

Though not physically present on Nítido’s journey, his father is integral to the story’s development and unfolding—and is addressed constantly in the second person, as though he might be “reading aloud from over [Nítido’s] shoulder” (pg. 300). What effect does this have on the reader, on our experience of the story? What does it reveal about Nítido that he is unwilling to reveal about himself?
 

How does Nítido’s “thinking in English” prevent him from relating to the people of Río Roto? What is being lost in the translation from English to Spanish (to K’iche’)? How does this effect the relationships he tries to cultivate? For better or worse?
 

What is the significance of Naranjo? How does its existence haunt the first half of Nítido’s journey, and the novel? And how is its significance altered by the end of the novel?
 

What roles do divination and superstition play in the lives of the villagers? What is Nítido’s role versus Dr. Estrada’s in responding to these aspects of the villagers’ lives and behaviors? What do you think was really causing the “sickness”? Do you believe that it’s possible Vincente’s death was actually caused by ingesting the barb wire?
 

Throughout the course of the story, a number of key figures and landmarks “vanish”—entire towns, family members, the memories of Nítido’s father, Nítido’s original family name—or are shrouded by such intense secrecy (marriages, schooling, alliances, histories) that leave them obscured to Nítido’s and our eyes. How has this effected life in the village? Nítido’s mission of unraveling his past and present?
 

What do you think is the mysterious obstacle that divides Río Roto’s river, or creates the moving light? Are we given any clues as to what they might be? Do you have any theories?
 

Were you surprised to learn that Tulio was la oreja—the one responsible for so much of the violence brought on by the Colonel and Josef’s execution? What clues to his identity might have been given earlier in the narrative?
 

Though an uncomfortable echo of the controversy surrounding his college degree, why does Nítido choose to copy sermons from John Perry instead of crafting his own? Or have they become his own after all, as they intermingle with his own thoughts and breath? Why does Nítido have such trouble isolating his thoughts from the world he experiences?
 

What do you think happened to Santos once he vanished from Xinia and Nítido’s camp? What might have caused him to head out before dawn on his own? What do you think unfolded once Tulio caught up to him?
 

With so much significance placed on the act of naming of objects, places and the self, why do you think Nítido’s family chose to adopt the more unusual “Amán” as their last name once in America? What was shed, or gained, in the loss of “Rodriguez”?
 

Toward the end of the novel, the author jumps into the voice of Diego, Nítido’s father, for one reflective moment, blending his voice into the rest of the narrative. What does this additional voice illuminate for the reader? (Or is this passage just a figment of Nítido’s feverish brain—a jumble of past and present visions?) And what does the author aim to impart to us here about the nature of memory and its imprint on our lives?

Editorial Reviews

As Sellers-García's rich debut opens in 1993, Nítido Amán is seeking his origins in Guatemala following his father's death by spending a year as a teacher in the remote village of Río Roto. His father had said that the Amáns came from a place "very near there," but was never specific as to the family's home village. Upon arrival, Nítido is immediately mistaken for an arriving priest and is too tired at first to correct the man who meets his bus and settles him in the sacristry. When, the next morning, his innocent questions about the burned schoolhouse and the path to a certain village are met with evasion, stony silence and worse, Nítido begins to suspect that Río Roto hides a deep trauma. On the third morning, when he is suddenly called in to give a woman last rites, Nítido, for reasons even he doesn't fully understand, tacitly accepts the role of priest. In a moving tale of mourning and revelation, Sellers-García puts Nítido's secret and hidden origins on a slow-motion collision course with the secrets of the town. While the pace is slowed by Nítido's letters to his dead father, this spare and vivid debut brings together wrenching personal and political histories. (Jan.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Impressive...Spare...Graceful...Part folk tale, part noir mystery, part meditation on the burden of history, this is a remarkable debut.

San Francisco Magazine

[An] impressive debut...[in which] the stage is set for the dramatic unraveling of near and distance savageries.

The New Yorker

In her debut novel, Sellers-Garcia draws from her own experience as a transnational whose cultural identity springs from both the United States and Central America. This beautiful and only partly fictional account features Nitido Aman, an American born in Guatemala. His parents were always kind, but it was clear that discussions about the past were forbidden. A twist of fate leads Nitido to a remote village in Guatemala's highlands, where he is mistaken for a visiting priest. Having lived through years of horrific guerilla warfare, the villagers each have a cache of unspoken terror. Familiar with his parents' conspiracy of silence, Nitido is not confounded by what he encounters among the villagers of Rio Roto; their silence staves off what they cannot bear. Sellers-Garcia succeeds in evoking the scent of the mud and the sound of the sugar cane swaying in the wind. Likewise, she reveals the details of the past ever so slowly, so that we gradually come to understand the paralyzing fear the people had to endure. Unsettling, evocative, and fascinating, this is a well-drawn portrait of a time and place very, very different from our own. Highly recommended for collections of literary fiction, especially those with an interest in Central America. [See Prepub Alert, LJ8/07]
—Susanne Wells

Library Journal

Looking for his roots, a young American travels to rural Guatemala in 1993. N'tido Aman's immigrant parents were always tight-lipped about their early life. He travels to R'o Roto, the village he's surmised they may have come from, only after a spate of trouble in his own life. Dismissed from a teaching job, N'tido goes to Oregon to nurse his dying and terribly diminished father. (The story of his stay in R'o Roto is addressed to him.) N'tido is a bewildered pilgrim, not sure why he's there or for how long or on what terms. When he's mistaken for the priest the town has been promised, he plays along, thinking the vestments and the trust accorded them will help him get the answers he wants. But R'o Roto is a suspicious, hostile and above all a sorrowful place; no one is very forthcoming with this young foreigner. Early on it becomes clear that the answers to N'tido's questions will be found in Naranjo. This village splintered off from R'o Roto, and its very name evokes grimaces of disgust from townsfolk. Debut novelist Sellers-Garc'a does a fine job with his story's powerful historical and political background, and he paints a fascinating portrait of enigmatic Xinia, the priest's assistant, guide and liaison to R'o Roto. But N'tido remains an oddly incurious cipher, the prose is plodding and the plot twists easily anticipated. The author tries much too hard to channel Gabriel Garc'a-Marquez and the great Mexican political novelist Juan Rulfo. Atmospheric, to be sure, but all atmosphere.

Kirkus Reviews