Kissing the Virgin's Mouth : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: words that only Gershten can string like musical notes.....
Review: The book is beautiful from page one. The non-spanish speaking reader may have difficulty with the many Spanish phrases throughout the book. The story is as true to life as if you were living in Mexico today. To this day women are as they are in Gershten's book. A society full of wishing and magic, Mexican women see the world from a window no American home will ever have. The strength of these women is as of warriors, though untrained, they don't give up. I wish the pages would have continued forever.

Rating:
Summary: Authentic Mexican Woman
Review: The Magda of Donna Gershten's Kissing the Virgin's Mouth is someone who has known the harsh beauty and cruel truth of life for women in Mexico, and I believe that Gershten must have done so also. Her characters are vivid and real. The blood that Magda's mother and her tia Chucha offer the baby Jesus blends with the blood of thousands who have gone before her. The language that Gershten uses to describe their offering is authentic, lyrical, and compelling. I trust it, and trust that the author knows Mexican women. A BEAUTIFUL tale, with heart and poetry and a cadence I only hear when I am in Mexico.

Rating:
Summary: Debut novel of growing up poor in Mexico - and moving on
Review: The title of this review makes it sound like another ho-hum feminist story about a deprived or abused woman moving upward into another culture. Yes, there's some of that, but there's so much more to this quite extraordinary fiction debut by Donna Gershten, who won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for her effort.
Guadalupe grew up as a victim of a strong patriarchial culture and learned how to work within that system. Then she manages to use her intelligence and beauty to rise above her origins, she find herself married and moved to the States. There, she's at a loss as to how to fit into her new world. All the old rules no longer seem to apply. This is a cross-cultural tale that deals with the inequities inherent between men and women, between those 'with' and those 'without' within both societies.