La autora de El color púrpura regresa a la narrativa, tras nueve años de silencio, con una historia de amor correspondido, de transgresión, donde se pone de manifiesto el poder curativo del sexo para los males del alma. ( )

from october 26, 2011:

rereading this book, now for at least the third time, i love it even more. there's something about it. the language, the sensuality, the otherworldliness, the honesty. i don't know if i can even name it. i just love it. This is a 5 star book this time around.

some other quotes, although some of the ones below i marked again this read:

"It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of a gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can't quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised."

"Laughter isn't even the other side of tears. It is tears turned inside out. Truly the suffering is great, here on earth. We blunder along, shredded by our mistakes, bludgeoned by our faults. Not having a clue where the dark path leads us. But on the whole, we stumble along bravely, don't you think?"

from december 5, 2008:

beautiful and engaging.

"The heady scent she wears rises full-blown into the sultry heat. All around her tension builds. She is the kind of woman who could provoke rain."

"Of course, she said, from watching their mothers make pots, primitive man would assume God made men from clay. Though why, seeing their mother's work, they'd think God male, she could not grasp."

"Let nothing stand between you and the dance of life."

"Crossing is the point, she said. Crossing is life. Being on one side or the other of the river is beside the point."

"The prisons are a contemporary plantation, and what is produced is produced by slave labor."

"Everyone has suffered, she said. In childhood, I would say, everyone has suffered. It is self-evident.
How, self evident? asked Susannah.
Irene sighed. Look at the world, she said.
Oh, said Susannah." ( )

Na zijn dood leert deze vader te kijken met een andere blik dan zijn 'white male gaze'. En dat verklaart een heleboel! Lezen dus! ( )

This book honours and sincerely explores the link between spirituality and sexuality by telling the tale of a family, and all it’s members, after an event that altered their lives forever. Without giving too much away, it’s about the denial of a young girl’s sexuality, and ultimately her self and how that affects her, her father, mother and sister. It also has a huge impact on how they all relate to each other from that point onwards.

What was fascinating to me was that when early on in the book she reveals the event, I couldn't believe that that was it. Simply because this thing happens in homes all over South Africa every single day. It took me a while to realize that it’s not only normal in South Africa, but ALL over the world. Show me a society that celebrates a woman’s sexuality and healthy expression of it and I’ll move there tomorrow to raise my own family of healthy women.

What followed the event was a very insightful and ever-so-interesting portrayal of what happens to us, ALL OF US, when we deny our daughters their sexuality. It’s painful. More painful yet when we have to acknowledge that we do not do the same thing with our sons.

I find that with every Alice Walker novel that I have read so far I am surprised by how indoctrinated I am by living in a patriarchal society. There are things that happen in the world, ways of being, that we all act out each and every day that are just so commonplace that we never ever question them. We don’t conceive that it could be different, because we’ve never heard of it being a different way. When I read her books, not only does she show me different ways of thinking about things, or doing things, but she also gets me questioning why we do it the current way, and then gives me the answer to the best of her knowledge and experience. Her books teach me enough to want to know more and more and more. ( )

"The story of an American family--would-be writer Susannah, her sister Magdalena, and her parents--who take up life with an endangered mixed race of Black Indians in the Mexican Sierras, explores how a woman's denied sexuality leads to a loss of self and the sexual healing of the soul."

Recommended by: Anna