Selected Prose and Prose-Poems (review)

Arizona fournal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 281 dence of each artist, chapter four announces from its title, "La antidisidencia: Francis," that it will take on a different perspective. The transvestite Francisco GarcÃ-a Escalante, whose female stage name is Francis, refuses to participate in gay political activism and strictly maintains that his private life remains separate from his acting career. Parting from this premise, Õ lzate explains how Francis has been ignored and even rejected by the gay community and progressive groups and traces how the transvestite has become accepted into a more conservative heterosexual group. This leads Õ lzate to outline a very informative sketch of homosexuality in Mexico. Chapter five analyzes the work of Tito Vasconcelos who has been an extremely prominent figure in the emergence and development of the gay theater movement. Unlike Francis, Vasconcelos has also played an important role in organizing and participating in gay rights events including theatrical productions that disseminated information about AIDS. Õ lzate compares Vasconcelos 's political activism to that of Jesusa RodrÃ-guez and explains that the two artists worked together for a period of five years in the early nineties. Õ lzate then briefly analyzes a few of Vasconcelos's spectacles including Shakespeare a b carta (1997) and Pasión según cabaretito (1999). Alzate's book is truly the first of its kind that will undoubtedly inspire scholars to reconsider cabaret as literature and it opens many possibilities for future avenues of investigation. I highly recommend this text to any reader who is interested in Mexican culture and history, Latin American theater, queer studies, and, of course, cabaret. Jennifer Rathbun University of Massachusetts, Amherst Selected Prose and Prose-Poems University of Texas Press, 2002 By Gabriela Mistral Edited and Translated by Stephen Tapscott As the first Spanish American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, Gabriela Mistral is a source of national pride throughout Chile. Her works are required reading at every level, from grade-school through the university. Despite this veneration, as well as recently renewed critical interest in her life and works, Mistral remains littleknown outside Spanish-speaking or scholarly circles. Stephen Tapscott's Selected Prose and ProsePoems promises to alter this situation. This handsome and carefully organized selection of Mistral's short prose pieces and prose poems provides the reader with an array of works that reveal the breadth of her concerns, perspectives , and talents. Though Mistral is often identified as a poet, this collection exposes die other side of her production and the impressive range of topics and subgenres encompassed by her writing . These pieces range from revealing morality tales for children to sophisticated readings of contemporaneous poets and their art, from pointed political statements to simple elegies in praise of the daily objects that, for her, bless our lives. In combination, they come to underscore the basis of Mistral's world view. They capture her abiding love of beauty and her faith in the divine order of existence. They also reveal her respect for all human spirit that struggles to affirm through word or deed these fundamental beliefs. In short, this varied collection allows Tapscott to achieve his goal of showing Mistral's remarkable "integrity within diversity" (238). Students of literature will particularly welcome the texts on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Alfonso Reyes, Alfonsina Storni, Rainer Maria Rilke, José MartÃ-, and Pablo Neruda. Those attracted to the debates about Mistral's social and political concerns will rurn first to "Profile of the Mexican Indian Woman" and "My Social Beliefs." Those who seek the calm, lyrical wisdom of the mother and teacher figure with which she is identified will take pleasure in the prose and prose-poems from Desobción. While this bilingual edition should attract the attention and gratitude of general readers, scholars, and Mistral enthusiasts, it is not entirely clear to which public it is directed. Generalists might skip the Spanish altogether, relying on the graceful and elegant English renditions. These readers could turn, in addition, to the English- 282 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies onryA Gabrieb Mistral Reader (1993), which contains twelve of the prose pieces offered here as well as a selection of poetic offerings. Scholars will benefit from the...