Summary:

There are many crossings in this bittersweet short story about Cleofilas. First, as a young woman, she leaves her dusty little town in Mexico with a new husband she hardly knows to cross north to Texas, "en el otro lado--on the other side." Filled with images of fictional passions from telenovas--soap operas--Cleofilas can hardly admit it to herself, let alone to anyone else, when her dreams of romance and domestic happiness sour in the face of poverty, alcoholism, and abuse. She remains trapped by shame, disbelief, and the limitations of women's traditional roles in a hovel on the banks of La Gritona--Woman Hollering Creek.

Finally, a health care worker notices Cleofilas's bruises during a prenatal visit and offers to help her escape. The clinician arranges for her friend to drive Cleofilas to the bus home to Mexico. Crossing the bridge over the Woman Hollering Creek, which has swollen with Spring rains, Cleofilas is introduced to and amazed by new, stronger and more positive possibilities for womanhood.

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The title of Scannell’s book refers to an episode in her work with AIDS patients when she realizes that the "good doctor" she’d been taught to be--scientifically precise, medically focused and aggressive--was not what many of her patients wanted or needed. From that point on, she strove to understand the nature of her patients’ suffering and how they might be cherished and morally supported during the last weeks and days of their lives. In a series of essays she offers haunting portraits of the men and women she served--and of herself, as she learns to recognize and grapple with her own anger, grief, comfort, and joy.

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In these selected works of the Afro-Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen--ranging from his early sound experiments through his more overtly political poetry to his final works--the Afro-Cuban experience of everyday life and its socio-historical and contemporary political underpinnings are constants. From slavery on to the natural and urban settings of Cuba, to the international places and communities of poets, politicians and activists shaping contemporary Cuban life, to the twinned invasions of Cuba by soldiers and tourists, and to the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Guillen portrays a life where everything, including love, is colored by suffering and rebellion.

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Rosita Arvigo is a Chicago-trained doctor of naprapathy (an alternative therapy that involves soft tissue manipulation, diet, and other non-drug modalities) who moved with her husband (also a naprapath) to Belize to open a medical clinic. Shortly after her arrival she met Elijio Panti, given a variety of names by his patients: el viejito, the old man, numero uno, or el mero, the authentic one.

One of the last traditional healers of Mayan medicine, Panti uses observation, experience, and divination with his sastun to diagnose his patients' illnesses; and herbs, manipulation, and prayers to treat them. Arvigo studied with Panti for five years, learning to identify and use countless plants in the rainforest that surrounds her home and, eventually, discovering the object that becomes her own sastun.

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Chamoiseau, a graduate student, arrives in Texaco, the illegal settlement above Fort-de-France, and is knocked unconscious by a rock. One volatile inhabitant has responded viscerally to the city official come to order the razing of his home. Others notice the coincidence between Chamoiseau's arrival and more positive events. Thus, in hope, and fear of police reprisal, they revive this "Christ," and bring him to Marie-Sophie Laborieux. In "the battle of her life" Texaco's founder begins to persuade the "Bird of Cham" to preserve her story and that of her people, to spare her town.

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Billy Sanchez and Nena Daconte, children of two wealthy Colombian families, fly to Europe to celebrate their honeymoon. Although married only three days, Nena is already two months pregnant. After she scrapes her ring finger on a rose thorn, the nearly imperceptible cut starts bleeding profusely. Nena is admitted to the intensive care unit of a Paris hospital. Visitation is permitted only one day a week so Billy must wait six days before he can see his wife again. He spends most of his time alone in a nearby hotel.

Billy tries to visit Nena sooner but is thrown out of the hospital by a security guard. Billy’s attempt to enlist the aid of the foreign embassy is equally unsuccessful. When Tuesday’s visiting hours finally arrive, Billy cannot locate his wife. He spots the physician who first evaluated Nena. The doctor regretfully announces that Nena bled to death sixty hours after hospital admission. No one could find Billy to apprise him of the situation so Nena’s parents have already arranged the funeral and transported the body home for burial. Billy exits the hospital with thoughts of violence and revenge for his calamity.

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Some readers may be caught off-guard by this elegiac love poem with its unconventionally direct thoughts about quality of life issues and family relationships. Had the narrator’s father not died twenty years ago, today would mark his ninety-second birthday. In the posthumous apostrophe to his father, the narrator remembers his storyteller voice, his “air of Old Spice,” and his fondness for lilacs in spring. The timeliness of his death prevented the miseries he and his siblings might have endured with illnesses, clinic and hospital visits, and life-saving interventions. Without specifying the circumstances, the narrator writes that his father died with his “dignity intact.”

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This beautifully written novel describes the death of Absalom Goodman of brain cancer and takes us into the lives and hearts of his family. The novel is written largely from the perspective of this dying husband of Gwen and father of Sonny and Rainey. In a semi-conscious state, Absalom alternates between memories of the past, psychic connections with his family members, sometimes delirious ruminations and what at times appear to be out of body experiences.

Throughout, one is immersed in a gripping drama of this working class black family and their efforts to overcome terminal illness, racism, poverty, inner city turmoil and the effects of the drug culture. One is caught up in anticipatory grief, identifying with the pain and unresolved questions of Gwen, Sonny and Rainey. The reader is moved by the love, the spirituality, the ultimate defeat of the streets and the continued hopes for the future.

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A brief, but to the point description of Zora Neale Hurston's visit to the office of a white physician in the mid 1900's. In a very few words, she provides a description of blatant racism. Although referred by a white friend, Hurston is badly received by a white nurse and physician. Separated from the other patients, she is placed in a closet-like waiting area with soiled towels and uniforms. The physician shows significant lack of interest in this patient, examining her in a rushed and desultory manner.

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Rocking The Babies is a rich novel which gives us significant insights into the lives of two aging black women who decide to volunteer as foster grandmothers in the neonatal unit of an urban hospital. Each of them is attempting to work out her own problems. Despite the commonality of race, (African-American), their class differences and life experiences become areas of contention as they come together in the hospital. The dynamics of their developing relationship, the descriptions of the day to day experiences in the neo-natal unit, the professional lives of nurses and doctors are depicted with skill, pathos, and humour.

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