Ana Castillo Critical Essay | Critical Review by Brian Evenson

Critical Review by Brian Evenson

SOURCE: A review of Loverboys, in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring, 1997, p. 201.

In the following review, Evenson offers a mixed assessment of certain stories in Loverboys, but overall receives the collection favorably.

As one of the more accomplished of Latina writers, Castillo is often able to paint a vivid image of characters and the way in which they are affected by their sense of who they are and what their cultures tell them to be. Nevertheless, despite the fact that many of its individual stories are successful, Loverboys is interesting less for the stories taken separately than for the resonances that begin to become established between stories.

As intriguing as the book's culture depictions is the complex way in which gender and desire are figured and refigured from story to story. We have desire of all types, heterosexual and homosexual, from women who flirt...
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