Sofia and her fated daughters, Fe, Esperanza, Caridad, and la Loca, endure hardship and enjoy love in the sleepy New Mexico hamlet of Tome, a town teeming with marvels where the comic and the horrific, the real and the supernatural, reside.
]]>As the book moves back and forth between Carmen's dreams of economic and emotional freedom and her erotic life (in which passion often feels as much like a trap as a release), Castillo's fluid style often lapses into carelessness. And there is a blurred quality to many of the images, like photographs taken from a moving car. Carmen's story is most engaging when she experiences isolated moments of independence: flamenco dancing, for instance, for the customers at a hair salon where she is working, dragging her bad leg around in front of the ladies under the hair dryers. The scene--a moment to relish--is almost heroic in its defiance of the exhausted world. --Emily White
]]>Reminiscent of the picaresque novel, Watercolor Women / Opaque Men contains episodes that range from the Mexican Revolution to modern-day Chicago and reflects a deep pride in Chicano culture and the hardships immigrants had to endure: "In my familia we don't / pretend. / We're not / Mixed blood. There are no buried / Spanish titles beneath /anyone's tombstone." Nor does Castillo tolerate the pretensions of others. Pomposity, arrogance, and narrow-mindedness are the targets of her satiric pen.
In a strong rhythmic and colloquial voice, Castillo explores these issues of love, sexual orientation, and cultural identity, taking to heart the words of Mama Grande: "You will always be your most reliable resource."
Ana Castillo is indisputably one of the most important Chicana authors writing today. She has written 17 books, the most noted being Peel My Love like an Onion and So Far from God. Born in Chicago of working-class parents, she went on to earn a PhD in American studies at the University of Chicago. Both as a journalist and literary author, she has been a major force in the struggle for economic justice, women's rights, and civil liberties. She has also won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, the Carl Sandburg Award, and the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award. At present, she lives in Anthony, New Mexico.
]]>Las redactoras chicanas de Esta puente, mi espalda han reavivado la forma femenina de puente que se vio en la poesía del castellano antiguo.
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Esta puente, mi espalda is the Spanish translation of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga with translations by Ana Castillo and Norma Alarcón. Adapted for a Chicana and Latina readership, Esta puente, mi espalda contains personal narratives, essays, and poems by radical women of color in the U.S. -- including Barbara Smith, Gloria Anzaldúa, Chrystos, Nellie Wong, Aurora Levins Morales, and many more.
The Chicana editors of Esta puente, mi espalda have rekindled the feminine form of puente (bridge) that existed poetically in old Spanish.
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