Promesas: Geography of the Impossible

Winner, 1994 Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Achievement This collection explores the disparity between promises and reality, especially as seen by Hispanic Americans from the time of Columbus to the present. "This collection introduces a newcomer whose voice i particularly sustained and developed. Vando's is a universal voice expressing childhood anguish and passion." Publishers Weekly "...these intense poems explode like flares above a battlefield of the heart to reveal a geography of the impossible." Library Journal

Proud and dispossessed, Vando gives voice to "souls dishonored, flesh disowned," the tragic destiny of Puerto Rico ("Borinquen"): conquest by Spaniards, exile ("Nuyorican Lament"), homelessness, struggle for independence, destruction of identity, and alienation. With a numb surface hiding grief for loss of her parents and heritage, she commemorates "connections" between massacred tainos (native inhabitants of Puerto Rico) and a "faint ancestral theme." A "tiny island drowning in a sea of Coca-Cola," Puerto Rico becomes the symbol of a sacrificed "covenant," a patria (homeland) for whom promesas (promises) have the beauty of ravaged causes. Seeking to transform defiance and mistrust into knowledge of love, "a sign of hope, of purpose. Of forgiveness," these intense poems explode like flares above a battlefield of the heart to reveal a "geography of the impossible."-- Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
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