User Reviews: I Ask the Impossible

My mom has always been big on researching user reviews before she buys things. That ranges from books to movies to cameras to computers to sleeping bags to pitcher water filters...everything! She does her homework, and she always ends up getting the best bang for her buck. I've been surprised by how often the most popular brand is not actually the most functional/long lasting/well liked of the choices. And it is rarely the least expensive. And then again, sometimes it is the best deal. But you never know, until you read what the people who actually use the product have to say about it.

We have talked before about how we never write user reviews ourselves, in spite of how helpful they are to us. American author and poet, Maya Angelou said, "When you learn, teach, when you get, give." In this case, we have been learning and getting, but not teaching and giving!

And so, when I learned about my assignment in one of my English classes to purchase, read, and post a review online about a book written by any of the authors we've studied this semester, a little part of me was excited to contribute to the online world that has been so useful to my mom. (And this all ties in with being active participants in the media...it's a simple way to use the media in order to share your thoughts about the media, among other things.)

I read the Ana Castillo's poetry collection, I Ask the Impossible. Here is the review I wrote about it, which I posted on Amazon:

Ana Castillo's collection, I Ask the Impossible, is a lovely statement about being a Latina in an American world, about motherhood and womanhood, family and relationships love and loss, mythology and war. Her tone is one of endurance and triumph. She has experienced hardship both personally and vicariously through the experiences of her ancestors and her people. But she does not play the victim; her experiences have strengthened her, have made her stalwart (as in her poem "Women Don't Riot") and independent ("La Wild Woman"). And yet she maintains a tenderness, even an innocence, in spite of the severity life has handed to her from time to time, which appears in many of her poems. She about lovers ("I Decide Not to Fall in Love"), about family ("El Chicle"), about womanhood ("A Nahua Woman's Love"), about death ("Death Is Only What It Is"), and etc. She also incorporates her Mexican-American heritage throughout the collection by use of the Spanish language and various Latin American references. One of my personal favorite poems from the collection which utilizes the Spanish/English dichotomy is "Poeta en Santa Fe." This simple poem uses beautiful form and imagery in both languages to describe the lonely emptiness of a person's absence. The jump between the two languages sends the powerful message that love lost if a universally painful experience, which is both melancholic and poetic at once. The poem is only ten lines long, and yet it accomplishes its purpose with a satisfyingly relatable ease, as if speaking the plain words that have been in readers' minds, which they have not yet put into coherent thoughts. All in all, I Ask the Impossible was a delightful read. Definitely recommended to readers looking for a meaningful perspective on the human experience.