The Color of Rivers

The Color of Rivers tells the story of three women—grandmother, mother, daughter—at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in the hard agrarian countryside around Cordoba, mythic land of the Moorish Caliphate in Spain and famous for its poets. In this last long poem by Juana Castro, with a lyric sensitivity beautifully translated by Ana Valaverde Osan, we are first presented with the story of the grandmother who, as a young child, painfully must take the role of a boy after her mother dies and her father is left with no one to help him with the chores in the fields. After undergoing many difficulties, incest being one of them, she ends up becoming a strong, assertive woman whose legacy to her daughter and granddaughter is an ennobled sense of female identity and the power of the word.

Juana Castro is a Spanish poet and translator who has published over 20 books. She is a member of the Real Academia de las Ciencias, Bellas Letras y Nobles Artes de Córdoba, as well as a member of the Asociación de Mujeres y Letras, and the recipient of numerous awards including the 2010 National Critics Award for her book, Cartas de enero. In 2018 she was named Ateneista de honor by the Andalusian Athenaeums.

Born in Tangier, Morocco Ana Valverde Osan earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is Professor of Spanish at Indiana University Northwest, and a member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language.