Migdalia Cruz is one of the foremost contemporary Latina writers of plays and musical theater. She writes works that deal specifically with Latino history, but she is also attempting to universalize the theater, to make it available and relevant to all ages, genders, races, and economic levels. Cruz draws deeply from her experience of life in the South Bronx, especially her experience of pain and search for identity and meaning. Her characters may find closure but not contentment; their lives and their expressions verge on beauty, but a sense of futility never forsakes them. Violence, frank confessions, sexuality, fragmented poetic language, and such stage devices as music, pantomime, silence, and symbol highlight inadequacy of verbal expression. She tries to say what has not been said, both in her past and in the literary and historical past of Latino culture. As a result, the vivid-- and sometimes extreme--images and...