The Madonnas of Echo Park

Jacaranda trees and blossoms reappear throughout all of the female narratives in The Madonnas of Echo Park. Though the images of the jacarandas change and adapt to the particular themes of each story, they resonate throughout the book as a symbol for the shared pain—and hope—experienced by Los Angeles women.

The image of the jacaranda is first introduced through Felicia’s story in “The Blossoms of Los Feliz.” Felicia opens her story by describing the tear-down of Chavez Ravine, where she lived with her grandmother as a child. Because she has observed demolition workers struggling with the strong native jacaranda trees, Felicia attempts to grow a jacaranda tree from a branch in her home. As she overwaters the branch, Felicia notices that the drowning flowers move toward the water, not away from it. She compares this stubborn “drowning” of one’s blossoms to Aurora Salazar, “the last woman evicted from Chavez Ravine, [who] learned this lesson when she was dragged by her wrists and ankles like a shackled butterfly off her land” (26). Felicia later connects the idea of drowning blossoms to Mrs. Calhoun, the wife of her wealthy employer, when she finds Mrs. Calhoun dead in her swimming pool with jacaranda blossoms all around her.