Alicia Gaspar de Alba Books

Rarely does a novel awaken all my senses, and stirs every emotion possible in the human soul. It is definately a story I will not soon forget, and definately will be remembered as one of my favorite novels.

This is a historical novel which happens in the late 1600's during the famous Salem Witch trials. Concepcion is a bastard child born to a Mexican government official and an Indian mother. Abandoned by her mother in Mexico after she had been indentured to a nun convent, Concepcion runs away with a friend only to be seized by Pirates and taken to New England. She arrives in New England pregnant after being repeatedly raped by the ships Captain.

The captain discovers her gift of calligraphy, renames her Thankful Seagraves, and sells her to a Boston merchant who plans to have her manage her father-in-laws farm while caring for the crippled man. Unable to speak English, deathly ill and terrified, Thankful gives birth to a daughter who her owner's wife covets.

For 8 years Thankful and her daughter are pulled between two worlds. Although she proves herself in her ability to care for the crippled man, learns to speak and write English and brings profits to the farm, she is considered unacceptable as a bi-racial servent who speaks a foreign language and is Catholic. Rebecca, her owners wife, slowly turns her daughter against her.

Throughout the novel, Concepcion keeps a journal that she hopes one day will be read by the daughter she loves so much. The journal gives you insight into what life was like in the 1600's.

When the hysteria of the Salem withcraft trials begin, Capcion's own daughter implicates her as a witch, sending her to the cold, filthy dungeons. The ending is bittersweet, creating a surge of emotions for readers.

my principle regret is that young latino students and aspiring writers are often pointed to this and other like products from the publishing mills and told they are the "literary" models to follow. the book is replete with trite, canned sentiment expressed in stiffly-worded dialogue from the mouths of two-dimensional characters. too many of the descriptions are of the flowery, cake-decoration kind. the narrative is littered with redundancy as well as words that are simply misused or incongruent with the intended meaning. someone can use a remedial course in plain, effective style. it is a shame to hear such books as this one touted as the best in current "latino literature." unfortunately, such things often get published (and praised) on the strength of an author's academic connections and fashionable political sentiments rather than the worth of the writing.

As women living in the 21st Century, we have unlimited choices. That is why it is so difficult to imagine what it must have been like for Sor Juana. She was an intellectual giant in the New World, displaying her abilities in subjects ranging from ancient history to physics. She was a self-taught scholar. Even so, she was persecuted. Not simply because her views were extreme (though they were), but because extreme views or, in fact, views at all, were considered unseemly in women. Sor Juana's story, as well as the history of early Mexico, is the inspiration for this novel.
No doubt, Alicia Gespar de Alba takes poetic license. It is impossible to know the intimate details of Sor Jauna's everyday life, but this is a good educated guess. And it is breathtaking. Each page is a heartwrenching description of the passions that tore Sor Jauna apart. Many of her own words are used in the story, and the parts that are fiction blend beautifully with them.
In addition to its revelation of an early feminist, this book is also important in its description of Colonial Mexico. In the background of Sor Juana's story, the reader is able to view the precarious mix of church and crown, whites and indians, and intellectuals and idiots. The time period, of course, is an essential part of what happens to Sor Juana, but it is an interesting subject of its own.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of feminism or Mexico or to anyone who enjoys poetry or rhetoric. Be warned, though, when you discover what this woman went through for knowledge, you may not be able to take your freedom for granted anymore.

I thoroughly enjoyed being drawn into the world of Sor Juana. She was a genius, a gifted poet, dramatist, philospher, scientist, theologian and humanist who radically sought her personal truth despite the constrictions of the societal and ecclesiastical institutions of her day. I surmise that Sor Juana would likely not have taken the veil has she lived in our day but she chose the only route left to her within her social position to attain some manner of intellectual freedom. Alicia Gaspar de Alba is a master storyteller who knows the art of bringing the vivid colors and textures of her subject matter to life. Though I do realize that this is a work of fiction and share the author's conjecture that Sor Juana's affections most definately rested with those of her own sex and her passionate manner of writing to the same was not simply a rhetorical device of her time, I did sometimes question her literary license with regard to specific scenes which are ambiguous at best in historical accounts, not in the slightest because I think them distasteful but simply because I think the brilliance and passion of this woman is not compounded by the "fleshing" out of her sexuality in pure fantasy. The climate of the ecclesiastical world during the inquisition and the sad state of inner conventual politics makes her luminous literary heritage even more astonishing. Though the author does tell this dark aspect of the divisions and hypocracy of some member of the Spanish Catholic Church of Sor Juana's day, she never does it gratuitiously and one senses a balance as with the priests and other nuns who support her and even try to help her remain on a path of discretion when her passions overtake her rational judgement. It is truly sad that her star disappeared too soon from the heavens that she so loved gazing into with her telescope. In any case, I found it an intensely beautiful read which left me wanting to know more of the woman behind the words. I recommend this highly to anyone who wants to know Sor Juana without the censorship of other admirers of hers who would deny her one of the most elementary forces behind her creative working - her passion for the two women who helped her become fully the muse that she was.

The story of Mexico's Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) is one of the great thinkers and poets of the 17th century and an iconic figure in women's history. In this intelligent, thoroughly researched novel, Gaspar de Alba goes beyond the established facts and paints a fictionalized, sometimes controversial portrait. Sor Juana, a prodigy of erudition from an early age, chose the veil, not because she felt a calling, but because marriage was even more unthinkable. Defying the Inquisition and the profoundly patriarchal world she lived in, she wrote and read prolifically and publicly until she was threatened into silence by the Church hierarchy. She then renounced her "worldly" ways and completely surrendered to religion, ceasing all writing and communication with the outside world.

As Gaspar de Alba tells it, Sor Juana was a lesbian. She makes a convincing case by juxtaposing the nun's own poetry with actual events and fictional journal entries. Commendably, Sor Juana's flaws are not glossed over; she is portrayed as vain, prejudiced, and difficult. This work of fine scholarship and vision should increase awareness of a compelling historical figure. Brilliantly written, is a must for any lesbian reader.

I've just seen the new historical novel on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Hunger's Brides by Paul Anderson, and the terrific review it got in the New York Times on Monday, August. 23, 2005. Although the heft of the book is daunting, I look forward to reading it and comparing it to my own book, Sor Juana's Second Dream, which was published in 1999, and which, due to the limited distribution and publicity resources of a university press , has never gotten the kind of press or promotion that would have helped sell out the first print run by now. Perhaps Mr. Anderson's book will spur a mainstream interest in the amazing life of Mexico's "tenth muse," and readers will pick up a copy of both his book and mine, sold here on Amazon for the outrageous price of $12.95 for the hardback. To quote Sor Juana: "from what I keep silent, you will infer what it is I cannot say."

"historical fiction" (what on earth does that mean?)

At the end, she lacks much knowledge of Mexican history to get this together.

I'm sure she's really smart. But she was bound to fail here; too political and too many stereotypes)

The sad fact is that the stories that should receive the most coverage in the news often go practically ignored. Since 1993 an atrocity has been going on at the US-Mexican border that has left hundreds of women raped, mutilated and dead while very little has been done to solve the crimes and stop whoever is behind them. This is the setting that Gaspar De Alba has chosen for her Lambda Award winning novel as she tells the story of Ivon Villa, who is drawn into the situation when her sistr disappears in Mexico.


Desert Blood builds at a pace that leaves the reader feeling the growing terror Ivon experiences as she faces the idea that she may find her sister too late. There is so much to this plot that it almost becomes one of the book's weaknesses. There are three stories that run at once - the disappearances of Irene and the other women, Ivon's quest to adopt a child and her relationship with her family over her lesbianism. The stories of the women would have been enough to make a complete book and the other two strains sometimes distract from that. That could actually be a plus though because the one story is so horrific that the reader needs some release time away from it. One irritating aspect of the book is that De Alba includes a lot of comments in Spanish. Given the setting of the book, it's appropriate, but there are no translations for those readers who do not speak the language and the impression is left that parts of the story are being missed or not understood. A glossary of some time would have been helpful.

The compelling nature of this story makes it a book that should be read. Anyone looking for a romance with steamy sex scenes won't find that here, but they will find an issue that will move them to anger and an extremely well written novel.

You won't be able to put this one down, and once you're done reading it, you'll want to help the women of Juarez. A great read, but an even greater source of vital information. Too many people are still unaware of the massive murdering of innocent young women along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Desert Blood sheds light on this horrible situation. I encourage you to read it and to take action informing others of the femicides in Juarez as well!

Now this one was full of so many turns and kept pulling you in deeper, good read.

This book made the hair on my neck stand straight up! But I couldn't stop reading. The fact that it is fiction centered around real events made it even more horrifying and compelling. But even if the Juarez murders had not and were not taking place, this is still an incredible book. It's well written, the story riveting, and the characters (very important to me) are drawn with great reality. The protagonist, Ivon Villa, is a strong but flawed gay woman, fiercely loyal to her family in spite of her mother's hatefulness, and her iron will and determination make her a perfect vehicle for the non-fictional message of this book. BRAVO ALICIA!