Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek (1991)

I loved The House on Mango Street, so I was looking forward to reading this collection of short stories by Cisneros, who has an amazing talent for imagery. It helps to be familiar with Latino culture when reading Cisneros, who is of Mexican decent, because she peppers her stories with references to the Latino way of life.

One of the stories in this collection, "Eyes of Zapata", is an account of Emiliano Zapata's life as told through one of his lovers. I'm not very familiar with that part of Mexican history, so I didn't get as much out of it as I could have.

My favorite story was called "Eleven" in which the author writes:
"What they don't understand about birthdays & what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, & nine, & eight, & seven, & six, & five, & four, & three, & two, & one ... Like some days you might say something stupid, & that's the part of you that's still ten ... That's what I tell Mama when she's sad & needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three."

Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa (1937) & Shadows on the Grass (1960)

It took me over a month to finish it, but I finally did!

Not that this was a bad read. It was really interesting to read about the experiences of a European woman living on the "frontier" of Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, especially since I know very little about the continent or its people, or the time period for that matter. I guess it was just a really long book, 462 pages to be exact.

At one point, Dinesen talks about a grumpy old Danish man who lived on her farm in Africa: "Old Knudsen, although he would sometimes sing of the sailor's bride who loves the waves, in his heart had a deep mistrust of woman, and saw her as the enemy of man, by instinct, and on principle, out to stop his fun." Which could be said of any man & any woman.

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie. My friend Michelle says that the movie & the book are completely different. Apparently Dinesen had so much information for her memoirs that what didn't make it into her book made it into the movie.

Leonard Nimoy, You & I (1973)

I saw this book at a thrift store & just had to have it. Leornard Nimoy, poet!

Turns out he's a really bad poet. After a Google search, I found out that he's also a musician (yikes!) & photographer (not so bad).