SOURCE: “Language and Other Barriers,” in Women's Review of Books, Vol. IX, Nos. 10-11, July, 1992, p. 42.

In the following review, Roses offers qualified praise for Another America.

This is the first volume of poetry for Barbara Kingsolver, whose previous books include The Bean Trees (1988), Animal Dreams (1990) and the short-story collection Homeland and Other Stories (1989). The first thing one notices about this collection is that each poem comes with a Spanish translation by the Chilean writer Rebeca Cartes. There's no preface to tell us how the bilingual arrangement came about or for which audience it was designed, but it's clear from the outset that Kingsolver feels a deep connection to the Spanish-speaking lands that begin before the Rio Grande and stretch all the way to the windswept limits of Tierra del Fuego.

Kingsolver knows that a political gulf much wider than the river separates North from South. Often there...