The rivers are inside our homes / Victoria María Castells.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Castells, Victoria María, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Loss (Psychology)--Poetry.

Loss (Psychology).

Women--Social conditions--Poetry.

Women.

American poetry--Hispanic American authors.

American poetry.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

x, 87 pages ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Rivers are inside our homes : poems

Place of Publication:

[Notre Dame, Indiana] : University of Notre Dame Press, 2023

Summary:

These incandescent poems by Cuban American poet Victoria María Castells explore how we can salvage our notion of paradise in an overspent Eden. In thwarted homes located in Havana and Miami, Rapunzel and her prince, persecuted nymphs, Morgause, and Bluebeard’s wife speak to us directly, all in need of returning to safety. Confronting machismo, illness, heartbreak, and isolation, the poems depict how women are at the mercy of men, either husband or oligarch. Yet all generations of Cubans are bombarded with this need to return or to leave, to have both, to have neither. Meanwhile, hurricane seasons add further instability to shelter and family, growing fiercer every year. Exile and displacement are accepted as permanent conditions. Latin America will mirror Cuba’s violent struggles as conquered land and despotic object. From the colonial desecrations to fraught revolutionary aftermath, the search for home is lyrically charted by this contradictory land of suffering and dreams. Through these poems, dictators, grandmothers, mythical characters, and buccaneers are given voices of equal strength, challenging what constitutes truth under a prism of fantasy and desire.

ISBN:

9780268205669

0268205663

9780268205676

0268205671

OCLC:

1360282185