Enduring Love

in Tamoanchan

Who is all flowers and song,

and dreams of her Rain God.

Tlaloc , furiously calling.

Aztec gods, got it -- now where?

Despite Ella's understandable rage at those "Righteous White Boyz" who see in her an archetype of primal strength, she (or her creator) feels free to indulge in stereotypes of her own. The white lovers she takes are far from opaque: They're transparent caricatures (patronizing, uptight, ashamed), while the Mexican Indian amor shines as a model of humble, earthy virtue and devotion. And the political asides about the plight of migrant workers and the heartlessness of American life feel just as stale as they are true, although in these times certain truths about power and oppression bear repeating.

Ella herself is a pillar of strength, a -- to use a word that now feels as old as any Aztec god but far less interesting -- survivor. She may paint in watercolor -- one of the references embedded in the book's title -- but she's not going to wash away. Still, it's hard to see Ella sometimes behind those three-line stanzas, and hard not to wonder whether she'd have been less of a watercolor if she came to us via prose. Is the obliquity of verse Castillo's attempt to recreate in words the experience of being brown-skinned in a culture that makes too many assumptions about identity without bothering to find out about the person under the skin? Maybe, but that explanation feels too neat. As it is, Ella remains something of a mystery, even to her own son.

That relationship is one Castillo does full justice to:

But this woman --

they had met head to head