Nopales For My Ancestors

About the Book

Nopales for my Ancestors is a book where the poet exposes her own conflicts from childhood to adulthood. "Nopales," are the cactus leafs. Leaves have thorns and these thorns represent struggles she had to endure with her own family and most of all with the religion she was subject to follow at the private school she attended.

From the cacti, the Magüey, a liquor drink, is also extracted. In Victoria's words, these were the joyful moments spent with he family as she grows up she realizes how harmful alcohol is in one's family. With each poem, Victoria cries triumph by rebelling against her own family, the church, and her marriage for trying to subject her to something she is not. Later, as her family emigrates to the USA, she encounters another oppression, the one no emigrants hear about. And these have to do with collecting food stamps, welfare, unemployment, disability insurance, etc.

Cut in pieces, we make nopales, a breakfast dish and this is what the poet feeds to her family and readers. A dish from which they can eat all they want. At the time where the poems end, she has realized that this is the only thing she can give to her relatives who have never understood her; nopalitos. In addition, she makes "Nopales for my Ancestors" a descriptive way of her life in Mexico and the USA.

About the Author

    Victoria Alegría Rosales is a Mexican-American poet and writer. After a hectic childhood and later a divorce, Victoria returned to San Francisco state University in 1986 to complete her M.A. in Creative Writing and Spanish Literature. With the rediscovery of the "Muse," she applied to the M.F.A. Program at San Diego State University where she graduated in 1993. Among Victoria's many contributions to anthologies is Skin Deep: Writings on Color, Culture and Identity edited by Elena Featherston and published by Crossing Press. Her most recent poem appeared in The Poetics of Information edited by Alex Cigale.