She is sheltered and self-involved, until the spirit of an Indian woman warrior enters her being, then she dares to join a revolutionary movement against a violent dictator and—through the power of love—finds the courage to act.

    She published eight volumes of poetry, and in 1972 anthologized them in a book entitled Poesía No Eres Tú (Poetry Is Not You), from which the Selected Poems was assembled.

    This sampler of her work brings together her major poems, short fiction, essays, and a three-act play, The Eternal Feminine. Translated with fidelity to language and cultural nuance, many of these works appear here in English for the first time, allowing English-speaking readers to see the depth and range of Castellanos' work. In her introductory essay, "Reading Rosario Castellanos: Contexts, Voices, and Signs," Maureen Ahern presents the first comprehensive study of Castellanos' work as a sign or signifying system. This approach through contemporary semiotic theory unites literary criticism and translation as an integral semiotic process. Ahern reveals how Castellanos integrated women's images, bodies, voices, and texts to feminize her discourse and create a plurality of new signs/messages about women in Mexico. Describing this process in The Eternal Feminine, Castellanos observes, ". . . it's not good enough to imitate the models proposed for us that are answers to circumstances other than our own. It isn't even enough to discover who we are. We have to invent ourselves."

    Italo Calvino once said about her, “I don’t know another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don’t show us.” Thus Were Their Faces collects a wide range of Ocampo’s best short fiction and novella-length stories from her whole writing life. Stories about creepy doubles, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks to a girl, a house of sugar that is the site of an eerie possession, children who lock their perverse mothers in a room and burn it, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman.Jorge Luis Borges wrote that the cruelty of Ocampo’s stories was the result of her nobility of soul, a judgment as paradoxical as much of her own writing. For her whole life Ocampo avoided the public eye, though since her death in 1993 her reputation has only continued to grow, like a magical forest. Dark, gothic, fantastic, and grotesque, these haunting stories are among the world’s finest.

    VOCES DE HISPANOAMERICA, the market-leading anthology, includes authors from the colonial period to the present and incorporates some of the most influential writers in Latin America."

    Three men brave the war-ravaged streets to meet at the opulent home of a friend, the famed surgeon Daniel Pacheco, for their semiannual gathering. As a lavish meal is served by the sullen housekeeper, interest centers on the photograph of an intriguingly beautiful young woman. Spellbinding revelations of erotic obsession and betrayal unfold, interrupted by the increasing bloodshed that presses closer to Pacheco’s door.             Stephen Dobyns has written a provocative novel of desire, lust, depravity, and danger—a classic thriller that holds you tightly in its grasp until its shattering conclusion.

    But tourists and opportunists are making inroads into the area, and the balance of nature is making a dangerous shift. Translated by Peter Bush.