“Sad flower in the sand”: Camilla Lopez and the erasure of memory in ask the dust

Abstract

While scholars of Ask the Dust have given considerable attention to the novel’s protagonist Arturo Bandini, his Mexican American love interest Camilla Lopez has been relatively neglected. Scholarship concerning Camilla has been limited to her destructive relationship with Arturo and her attempts at adopting Hollywood values. By foregrounding the figure of Camilla through the socio-historical lens of the marginalization and deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the 1930s, this chapter offers important insights into Fante’s novel, most notably in its treatment of ethnic identities within Los Angeles. It also provides a feminist reading of Ask the Dust by examining Fante’s treatment of working-class female subjectivity and of how Camilla’s recurring presence and absence draw attention to the Mexican past of Los Angeles, a history often erased in the city’s collective memory.