SOURCE: "Mapping a New Territory: Luisa in Realityland" in Letras Femeninas, Vol. XIX, Nos. 1-2, Spring-Fall, 1993, pp. 84-99.

In the following essay, McGowan examines the visionary nature of Luisa in Realityland and praises Alegría's ability to find new ways of expressing ideas and experiences.

Claribel Alegría's Luisa in Realityland is a truly visionary work; not only does it project the story of one woman's struggle and oppression into a "contagious peace" ("The Return"), in which she can, paradoxically, "return / to the future," but it challenges all known genres and refuses to be catalogued or restrained by any one label. Moreover, more than visionary, Luisa is revisionist, in that it offers new ways of depicting themes, images, realities—literally, a re-vision. Adrienne Rich offers a useful frame of reference for Luisa in Realityland in defining "re-vision" as "the art of looking back, of entering an old text...