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Title: So Far from God: A Novel by Ana Castillo ISBN: 0-452-27209-2 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: May, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.91 (32 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A sensuous reading experience
Comment: I have read this wonderful story about relationships between women, politics, and spirituality at least four times. The first time, I devoured most of the lyrical dialogue and marvelous images during a college all-nighter. Hungry for voices that reminded me of family, I couldn't put the book down!
Most recently, I have asked my students to read this novel at the beginning of the UC Berkeley course, "Redefining Chicana and Latina Health: Body, Mind, and Spirit." It always creates a space to discuss health and healing in relation to culture, environmental racism, labor exploitation, sexism, homophobia, faith, and political organizing . Ana Castillo's characters ask us to consider the costs of internalizing oppression, as well as present transformative ways of being in the world. A hopeful novel about the need for social change and personal transformation, it deals with the challenges many of us experience across difference in the United States.
Instead of describing this story as "magical realism," I prefer the more accurate translation of the Carribean and South American consciousness and style of representation called "lo real maravilloso" - So Far From God is about the "marvelous real." Reading this book is a sensuous experience that engages your physical body, as well as your mind and soul.
Rating: 5
Summary: Be surprised . . .
Comment: This book was on my Ph.D. reading list for comps and I approached it with the same weary "omigod yet another book I have to consume in two days" approach that had seemed to get me through the other hundred or so books on the list. I was surprised.
Ana Castillo's novel is on another level of literary understanding. If you're living on a diet of cable television and typical Judeo-Christian-Western-Philosophy-White-Man metaphysics that you picked up off the floor because it seemed familiar to you, then much of the beauty of this book will be missed. Too bad. Change the channel.
_So Far From God_ is lush, exotic--and remarkably familiar. This too is America. What strikes me, what shocks me, is the unbelieveable beauty Castillo creates in the midst of horror. People are tortured in this novel in the same manner that they are tortured in real life. The "magic" lies in how they transcend suffering.
But there are moments in this novel that resist positivity--the chemical plant is one of those moments. A reader must reflect on what this means, on a political and spiritual level. Castillo's novel demands critical thought--not what many people look for in entertainment, but certainly what those in the humanities find sustaining.
This novel will persist. If you find yourself reacting to it, question the nature of the reaction. You might find out something about how you define yourself: as an American, a woman, a believer in God . . . The mark of literature--not entertainment.
Rating: 2
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: I found this book amongst my roomate's things when we were moving out of our dorm for the summer. It had been an assigned reading for a Southwestern Literature at my college. I thought it seemed intresting enough so I picked it up over the summer and started to read. At first I really got into it. It's typical of Southwestern Lit. Full of magical realism, descriptions of the landscape, use of spanish and english. At first I really got into it. I was fasinated by the charaters and liked the discursive narrative. About two-thirds through the book it seemed to fall flat. Fist, there author includes a story that had little relationship to the plot at all. The tangent did't add any "color" or anything elese redeamable, except to confuse the reader. Secondly, over half the book was focused on the intresting stories of the sisters. I really liked the characters, and I was intrested in their stories. I was hurt when they were all killed off, mostly in long painful deaths. I'm not a happy-ending kind of person, usally I find them sappy and mawkish. After finishing So far from God I was depressed. Althought the book has some artistic meritm this is not a fun read or a "beach read". If you really want a good read from this Genre, read the Milagro Beanfield War.
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Title: La frontera / Borderlands by Gloria Anzald¿A, Gloria E. Anzaldua, Sonia Saldivar-Hull ISBN: 1879960567 Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Dist Pub. Date: 15 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Rain God by Arturo Islas ISBN: 0380763931 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia ISBN: 0345381432 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 10 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: ...y no se lo tragó la tierra / ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomas Rivera, Evangelina Vigil-Pinon, Evangelina Vigil ISBN: 155885083X Publisher: Arte Publico Pr Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Death of Vishnu: A Novel by Manil Suri ISBN: 006000438X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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