"Sweet Diamond Dust" and Other Stories by Rosario Ferre NEUF collection

Product Name: "Sweet Diamond Dust" and Other Stories by Rosario Ferre NEUF collection
EAN：9780452277489 collection UPC：9780452277489 ISBN：9780452277489 MPN：N/A Format：Paperback, 208 pages Recommended Age Range：12+ years
"Hypnotic... should not be missed."-Lucy Stark, Voices from the Gaps

Originally published in Spanish under the title Maldito Amor ("Cursed Love"), Sweet Diamond Dust introduced American readers to a voice that is by turns lyrical and wickedly satiric. A finalist for the National Book Award with her 1995 novel, The House on the Lagoon, Ferre here uses family history as a metaphor for the class struggles and political evolution of Latin America and Puerto Rico in particular. The result is writing of the highest order-provocative, profound, yet delightfully readable.

The "sweet diamond dust" of the title story is, of course, sugar. In this tale the De La Valle familys secrets, ambitions, and passions, interwoven with the fate of the local sugar mill, are recounted by various relatives, friends, and servants. As the characters struggle under the burden of privilege, the story, permeated with haunting echoes of Puerto Ricos own turbulent history, becomes a splendid allegory for a nations past. The three accompanying stories each follow the lives of the descendants of the De La Valle family, making the book a drama in four parts, raising troubling issues of race, religion, freedom, and sex, with Ferres trademark irony and startling imagery-a literary experience no reader would want to miss..