I Offer My Heart as a Target / Ofrezco
mi corazón como una diana
Review in Publishers
Weekly 10/21 issue:
In the introduction to this piercing and timely exploration
of gender, violence, and social justice, novelist, poet, and critic Rigoberto
González writes: “The survivor speaks her truth, or rather, writes her way to
truth as an avenue of expression.” As the book unfolds, readers witness the
role of language in creating truth from a variety of aesthetic vantages,
ranging from the philosophical to the image-driven: “To smoke in another
language causes a cancer that spreads; first the lips, then the tongue,” Paz
explains in “Diaspora of Words.” Throughout, she calls attention to language as
a reason for those in power to exclude, and effectively disenfranchise, those
individuals beneath them. Yet language also appears as a source of
understanding, connection, and community: “We went to live to indulge the
enemy/ to resist nights of storms and orphanhood to hear the silence of the
lips/ sealed by the ignorance of the language.” To understand others,
individuals must first learn how they organize, structure, and understand the
world around them through language, Paz suggests. “Against all prognoses,/ we
survive,” she proclaims in this moving book that, with Schimel’s skillful
translation, highlights resilience in the face of oppression.
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