Kissing the Virgin’s Mouth by Donna M. Gershten

Kissing the Virgin’s Mouth by Donna M. Gershten is a beautifully written novel that artfully describes the duality of life. The voice of the story, Magda, details her life growing up poor and later acquiring affluence in a costal resort community in Mexico. Her story is one of contradictions: she is distrustful of men but she still yearns for love; she longs for faith yet she discards religion; and she lives life by her own rules but also respects tradition. She recounts both her childhood and adulthood with detailed accounts of abuse, neglect, manipulation, and mistrust. Determined to prosper, to move beyond her family’s plight, she finds ways to survive in patriarchal cultures where she does not fit in.

Gershten's spirited, debut novel is the first winner of the Bellwether Prize for a work of socially or politically engaged fiction. It has strong feminist overtones and lots of cultural references. Like the last Bellwether I reviewed, The Book of Dead Birds, this is another story of strong women, mothers and daughters, and how they influence one another. The Spanish colloquialisms create a powerful atmosphere and help to make the characters more real and deep.

I’m always intrigued when authors write novels about cultures to which they don’t belong. I did a little research about the author and discovered that she was born in eastern North Carolina and later lived for some years in Sinaloa, Mexico, where she ran a fitness and community center. I wonder if someone of Hispanic origin would think she did a good job portraying the culture in this novel. So I tried to find out. I did discover this interesting post on amazon.com from icolibri; “In reading the novel I realized that Ms. Gershten had done nothing more than to re-interpret what she might have seen while she lived in Mexico. The first obstacle in her narrative is her misuse of the Spanish language. She makes the common errors the English speakers make when speaking Spanish, and not the errors of the poor, uneducated Spanish speakers. Then you come across her off hand treatment of the Virgin of Guadalupe. While Magda may be the only exception to the way the millions of Mexicans venerate their patron saint, it was difficult accept that Magda would disrespect the Virgin by calling her Lupa. If she wanted to use an endearment, she could have used Lupita, but then only Mexicans know this. These are just the basic problems that I found. Limitation of this review prohibits an in-depth criticism of her misinterpretation of the Mexican woman psyche.”

So, I guess if you’re a non-Spanish speaking, white, feminist woman you might like the book!