ustxtxb_obs_1995_11_17_50_00020-00000_000.pdf

Ramirez, Jovita Guerra Gonzalez de Mireles, Leonor Villegas de Magri& and Josefina Nigglithough principally as abuelitas, foremothers of the current poets and fiction writers their anthology showcases. Daughters of the Fifth Sun derives its title from the indigenous Aztlan belief that the universe has gone through four solar ages and that we now inhabit El Quinto Sol. None of the volume’s contributors is old enough to have been burnished by the Fourth Sun. “On the universal clock, Sagan tells us, / we are only moments old,” writes Gloria Vando. The book that includes her poem “HE 2-104: A True Planetary Nebula in the Making” arrives just in time not only to appease multicultural appetites but to verify recent achievements by Latinas. Though the editors insist upon “the fact that there is not a single contemporary Latina writer whose literary work is devoid of political themes,” the selections do not always make that apparent. Revolution is the background to Cisneros’ “Eyes of Zapata,” a bedside meditation on the Mexican guerrilla leader, and sexual politics is prominent in “The Wedding,” Chavez’ story about a woman who marries an obnoxious cad. Feminine solidarity and the aftermath of war figure in “Nada,” Judith Any use of language is an exercise in power, and any assertion by a minority woman a political act. Ortiz Cofer’s story of how neighborhood women come together to support a mother whose son has been killed in Vietnam. Yet More Than Everything,” a haunting poem about a dead lover, is not political except in the sense that any use of language is an exercise in power, and any assertion by a minority woman a political act. As Lucha Corpi notes in “Four, Free, and Illegal,” a portrait of the artist as a young woman in Veracruz, “the only important truth is that words have the power to communicate the ineffable and that as a poet I am the language power broker.” Editors, too, are power brokers, and the trio who compiled Daughters of the Fifth Suncitizens all of San Antoniouse their command over the table of contents to favor Mexican Americans, especially Te janas, over other sorts of Latinas. Among thirty-two featured authors, all but Chilean Marjorie Agosin, Dominican Julia Alvarez, Cubans Margarita Engle, Maya Islas, Eliana Suarez Rivero, and Mireya Robles, and Puerto Ricans Cofer and Ferre are Chicana. Teresinka Pereira was born in Brazil, and her inclusion stretches the volume’s definition of Latina as “referring to a common linguistic base, that is, Spanish.” Why not also embrace French Americans and Italian Americanslikewise daughters of a Latin-based vernacularas “Latina”? The Introduction traces Latina literature to the 1960s Chicano movimiento. In the Southwest where it was centered, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Central Americans are a distant afterthought. The editors’ observation that San Antonio was founded by a Canary Island woman, Maria Betancour, does little to explain the efflorescence of Nuyorican poetry. But it is the business of editors to select commissions, of reviewers to fault omissions. Among Latina works published in this anthology, readers will surely find riches enough to forget categories, to share Cherrie Moraga’s Whitmanesque universalist, pansexual aspirations: “My sin has always been to believe/ myself man, to sing a song/ of myself that inhabited everyone.” CLASSIFIEDS CLASSIFIED RATES: Minimum ten words. One time, 50 cents per word; three times, 45 cents per word; six times, 40 cents per word; 12 times, 35 cents per word; 25 times, 30 cents per word. 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