Daughters of the Fifth Sun: A Collection of Latina Fiction and Poetry. - book reviews

What makes this collection unlike existing ones is the distinctive combination of gender and ethnicity that identifies its authors. All are Latinas, North American women from a romance language background.

Form 17th-century Sor Juana lnes de la Cruz to Isabel Allende, Elena Poniatowska, and Luisa Valenzuela, women have been breaching the canon of Latin American literature. In the U.S., though, Latinas have lagged behind their male counterparts--Tomas Rivera, Rodolfo Anaya, and Oscar Hijuelos--in gaining public recognition. Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisperos, and Rosario Ferre, among others represented in this compilation, are beginning to be known beyond the barrios of academe and small presses. This volume offers an opportunity to make the acquaintance of others.

Although the editors deplore the neglect of literary Latinas, they acknowledge that, until recently, there was little to neglect. Attempting to uncover a Latina tradition, they salute Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Lucy Parsons, Jovita Guerra Gonzalez de Mireles, and Josefina Niggli--though principally as abuelitas, foremothers of the current poets and fiction writers they showcase.

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. The book arrives just in time not only to appease multicultural appetites, but to verify recent achievements by Latinas.

Though the editors insist on "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. Rosemary Catacalos' "(There Has to Be) Something 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 Illeagal," 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."

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. Nevertheless, readers will find riches enough to forget categories, to share Cherrie Moraga's Whitmanesque aspiration "to sing a song/of myself that inhabited everyone."

COPYRIGHT 1996 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group