Woman Without Shame
Poems
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME and GOODREADS • A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street.
It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The introspective latest from Cisneros (Loose Woman) sweeps through her life with blunt observations and heartfelt prayers. The frequent use of Spanish words and fresh images of quotidian moments of life in Mexico ("when dawn arrives/ with her furious scent of bolillos,/ orange peels, and.../ Fabuloso" and "my heart... a peeled mango bearing an emerald housefly") act as both description and invitation. In short, lyrical poems, Cisneros juggles religion ("God Breaks the Heart Again and Again until It Stays Open"), humor ("I Should Like to Fall in Love with a Burro Named Saturnino"), and politics ("A Boy with a Machine Gun Waves to Me"). In keeping with the book's title, these poems bare her past in the more personal work about sex ("You Better Not Put Me in a Poem" begins with a list of images of previous lovers' penises: "a curved scimitar," "a fat tamale plug," and "a baby pacifier"), about almost dying ("Year of My Near Death"), and about aging ("This loss of the/ right ear's hearing,/ No cross.// I only half listen/ Anyhow.") These plainspoken, affecting poems reveal a writer fortified by a sometimes difficult past who has come to embrace the freedom that comes with self-acceptance.
