The Day of the Moon

by Graciela Limón

En esta obra dram?tica, la novelista cuenta una historia de amores prohibidos. Una relaci?n que nace entre un miembro de la familia Betancourt y un tarahumara que trabaja en el rancho familiar... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558852743
• ISBN13: 9781558852747
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Arte Publico Press
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Intriguing Look at the Raramuri

Limon uses a historical setting in Mexico during one of the many Mexican revolutions to spin a tale of forbidden love, jealousy, and opression of native peoples. All readers from teen to adult ages would enjoy it. Beautiful language is used in description of characters and setting. The reader can really picture the people and places. I highly recommend this book, not only for the story, but also for the important underlying themes concerning the Raramuri people of Mexico.

captivating and engaging !

a skillful portrayal of "forbidden" loves!from the first page, graciela limon takes her readers by the hand (and heart!) and leads them deep into a mostly misguided world where secrecy and shame shroud and shackle life's inhabitants -- but where real and true love will be neither silenced nor denied anymore!thanks to well-crafted and meaningful writing -- you, too, will fall in love! ... with a character, with a belief, with a cause! the power of the passion that has been poured into these pages will ignite in you a fire, and incite you to rise up alongside these courageous "underdogs" -- and to fight against a man/society who/that so cunningly, coldly, and diabolically plots, schemes, connives and contrives to control those, who by virtue of nature and gender, have been born and are considered to be lesser/weaker, by condemning them to living deaths - for loving those who are "forbidden" -- and, in one way or another, by taking the lives of their "forbidden" lovers.who can read, and not feel, the pleasure and pain that seduces and sways the lonely brigida as she first lays eyes on her brother's betrothed? only to be forced to succumb to an empty life devoid of her existence. -- and -- who can bear witness to, and not be affected by, the finish of the raramuri's race - in which isadora's too-brown-skinned young lover will, quite literally, run away forever with her heart! yet, there is the promise of triumph amidst the tragedy -- the novel ends with new hope in the form and character of alondra, isadora's daughter, for this "bird that sings sweetly and flies to unknown distances" becomes intrigued by the passion(ate stories) of her past/ancestors, and returns to her roots in search of a better and brighter (a more enlightened) tomorrow.as one of limon's characters reminds us: "some spirits are made for one another" -- and, until the day comes when we are free to live and love without fear, condemnation or reserve on THIS side of the sierras, we have our/The Day of the Moon = a must read! especially for anyone who has ever been tormented by and/or lived a "forbidden" love!

Graciela Limon makes us weep while giving us hope.

Graciela Limon has continued her tradition of giving us the real story from the point of view of indignas rather than settling for an accepted view of history. Just as she takes the Hummingbird god of war in Song of the Hummingbird and makes him the female diety Huitzitzilin, she invokes the male diety Xipe Totec and makes him female. Limon rewrites traditional mythology and gives power to the female. Her choice to call the Tarahumara tribe, Raramuri, the name they prefer rather than by the name the Spaniards gave them allows these people to have their own voice. On top of these accomplishments she gives us an innovative story and tells it so well we. Limon's descriptions compliment the quality of her storytelling. Some are so effective that they give you chills, as when she describes a young girl's horror of the shadows caught inthe corners of windows. She says, "The shadows that clung to the vaulted ceilings like giant blackbirds scared her (76)." Limon's treatment of the different faces of silence gives her story strength. From the silence that the protagonist's sister weilds to the silence that the scheming plotting protagonist Flavio maintains, and the silence of Isadora after she meets with a fateful demise, silence is a mechanism for mystery and intrigue. Day of the Moon is definitely a book you can't put down. To read it is to be transported to another world, to another place in time, and into the lives of a type of people most of us have never even thought of.

Racism, Secrets, Forbidden Love etc., etc.

What a wonderful book! Once I had started, I could not put it down. I see it as a combination of Romeo and Juliet (but this Juliet tries to shoot her father), Othello (but the "general" here is jealous of his sister's love for his wife), and maybe even some Cask of Amontillado thrown in for good measure (yes, someone is walled up). Classic themes, however, are treated in a fresh way-lots of them, including family secrets, murder, dismemberment, casting out, imprisonment, forbidden love, racism, and a quest for one's place and identity. What is particularly interesting is the way the novel is set up with sections devoted to most of the main characters. All are told with the omnicient point of view except one, this one almost in the very middle of the book and coming from the voice of Ursula Santiago who by speaking in a letter appears to be talking directly to the reader. Graciela Limon has written a wonderful novel illuminating the situation of the Indians who escaped the Spanish Conquest by fleeing to the mountains and caves, a place called El Cañón del Cobre. The Spanish called the people the Tárahumara, but their name for themselves is Rarámuri.Read this excellent book. It will capture you completely.