Enduring Love

In three-line stanzas, the tale of a Chicano woman in Chicago struggling to make a life.

Discussion Policy
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Reviewed by Jennifer Howard
Sunday, December 25, 2005

WATERCOLOR WOMEN/OPAQUE MEN

A Novel In Verse

By Ana Castillo

Curbstone. 269 pp. Paperback, $15

It's a bold or a foolish decision to write a novel in verse. Few enough people pick up novels; fewer still read poetry in any form. Combine the two, and you risk sacrificing the propulsive possibilities of narrative prose to the elliptical insights of verse. Who'd trade a robust narrative and well-fleshed-out characters for a handful of lyrical moments?

You don't really have to in Watercolor Women/Opaque Men , Ana Castillo's new novel in verse, although its hybrid literary form tries to contain more multitudes -- of characters, historical and mythological episodes and socio-political commentary -- than it has room for. Like Castillo's previous books, Peel My Love Like an Onion and So Far From God , this one centers on the lives and loves of Latino women -- in this case one woman, the archetypal Ella. She was born to Mexican workers who came to the United States for " la pizca " -- "the picking they did/season after season" in the growing fields that, for people like them, have also been killing fields.

Castillo writes feelingly of those who work themselves to death, the children like Ella forced to toil alongside their too-soon-old parents:

Forget

The sun that caused fevers,

blistered lips and feet,


CONTINUED     1                 >


Find More Reviews and Features in Books

Who do men say that I am?

Though too cursory to work as an intro to the Gospels, Mary Gordon's "Reading Jesus" should appeal to anyone who wants to wrestle with the problems and paradoxes of the New Testament.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company