64 pages • 2 hours read
Joyce MaynardThe Bird Hotel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Weather Underground
The group with which Diana becomes unwittingly affiliated is modeled on the real Weather Underground, a group organized in the US in the late 1960s. The organizers initially called themselves the Weathermen after a lyric from a Bob Dylan song; Dylan was one of several musicians, along with Joan Baez, writing protest music during the 1960s. The group grew out of a leftist student society organized in support of communist principles, but the Weathermen perceived themselves as revolutionaries and adopted a militant stance in protesting the actions of the United States government. The group opposed American involvement in the Vietnam War and worked to end institutionalized racism, which was also being protested via militant means by groups like the Black Panthers.
The Weather Underground strategy included bombings, and their targets included US government buildings like the State Department, military recruitment sites, the Pentagon, and the US Capitol building. The only deaths in these bombings resulted from an accidental explosion that took place at a house in Greenwich Village in New York City on March 6, 1970, in which three members of the organization—two men and one woman—died. Two women who escaped were considered fugitives from justice, and throughout the 1970s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation made a concerted and highly publicized effort to locate and apprehend members of the Weather Underground, considered domestic terrorists.
Two of the bodies of those killed in the Greenwich Village explosion were identifiable only through dental records, and the third had been lacerated by the nails used to pack the bomb. Details invented for the novel include the woman’s fingertip later used as a source for DNA identification and the character of Jose Martinez, the off-duty police officer killed by her blast. Due to their dramatic tactics and position on top of the FBI’s Most Wanted list, the Weather Underground has loomed large in the American imagination as a group of radicals and revolutionaries, making it believable that Diana and Irene would keep their identities secret for forty years.
Geographical Context: Guatemala
Though the country where Irene settles in The Bird Hotel is fictional, the area surrounding La Llorona has parallels to Guatemala, a country in Central America with which Maynard is familiar. For over two decades, Maynard has led a writing retreat that gathers at Casa Paloma, a property she owns on the shore of Lake Atitlán. This property lies near San Marcos la Laguna, a Mayan indigenous village that is partly the inspiration for La Esperanza.
Lake Atitlán, located in the Sierra Madre mountain range, is overlooked by San Pedro Volcano, an iconic presence visible from virtually every part of the lakeshore. To attract tourism to the area, the lake was stocked with black bass in the 1950s. This is the fish Pablito, the harpoon fisherman of the novel, is hunting. Multiple Mayan archaeological sites have been discovered beneath the surface of Lake Atitlán, and the inhabitants of several surrounding villages still follow the Mayan traditions of their ancestors, the peoples who lived in the area before Spanish colonization. The city of Panajachel is home to many visitors from elsewhere in Guatemala as well as foreign tourists and residents. Tropical storms and hurricanes have been known to cause flooding and landslides. Hikes up the volcano are a popular tourist attraction.
While inspired by Guatemala, Maynard notes in the front matter that her setting is fictional, purposely so [xi], and she has invented many aspects, including some varieties of birds and the baby-making herb that Jun Lan locates. The currency of Guatemala is the quetzal, named after the national bird, and Maynard’s fictional country uses the garza, the heron. Guatemala witnessed a civil war from 1960 to 1996, and there is no reference to a war in Maynard’s book, though the impacts of foreign residents, tourism, and global capitalism are influences that residents of many Central American countries have confronted and continue to face.
