Another America: Otra America - Softcover

Text: English, Spanish

The citizens of Kingsolver's ( The Bean Trees ) other America are demonstrators whose silent vigil on the eve of Desert Storm defies the "opera of assent" to war. They are Nicaraguan peasants whose arrival at voting polls is "like a pulse," though they risk "any foreign bullet." In this first volume of poetry Kingsolver identifies with the other America's struggles so powerfully that she has her poems translated into its mother tongue--Spanish. This identification sometimes makes for strong, moving poetry. The reader shares the life sentence of emotional entrapment and betrayal that a rape victim endures when her trust, like her "kitchen knives / and other things of mine . . . have been used against me." Frequently, however, Kingsolver's representations are far less compelling. "For Sacco and Vanzetti" fails to move beyond a tearful plaint for the unjustly executed immigrants. Stylistically, too, Kingsolver is uneven, offering intriguingly detailed descriptions of a sleeper's R.E.M.s--"Your eyes swim quick strokes / in sealed wet caves"--and abstract uses of abstract terms, wishing for a day "when justice / is not a word / because it is air and we breathe it."
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.