cover image Goddess of the Americas

Goddess of the Americas

. Riverhead Hardcover, $24.95 (231pp) ISBN 978-1-57322-029-3

The Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico who made her first appearance in Mexico in 1531, is the theme of the poems and other writings in this book. The writings that novelist Castillo (Loverboys, 1996) gathers are personal stories about the Virgin's place in Hispanic, Catholic, Aztec, folkloric and feminist cultures, mythologies and traditions. The marvelous stories and poems in this collection center on the Virgin of Guadalupe as cultural and conceptual icon.This is an entertaining read for readers willing to look outside traditional understandings of the Marian theology to a broader horizon in which the religious and the cultural intersect. (Nov.)