by Jessica Coburn
"If you don't want to see me, then cover your eyes" (Conde, 20).SDSU Press presents Rosina Conde's Women on the Road in a new translation! In this republication, Nayeli Castaneda-Lechuga's translation brings to life Conde's powerful stories into English while still preserving Conde's natural voice and poetic writing. Conde is a talented Mexican writer, playwright, and poet and has earned many awards for her writing, including the Río Rita in 1990. The above quote captures the essence of Conde's work, unapologetic and expository. Conde's characters sing from each line, touching my heart as I devoured the pages.
Women on the Road is a collection of short stories that follow the lives, loves, and above all the sorrows of women throughout Mexico. Despite their hardships, Conde's characters are unashamedly angry at the life they are expected to endure and defy those standards. Reading Conde's stories, I was transfixed by her women- of their pain that despite experiencing a life very different from, I couldn't help but know. Her characters speak to the experience of every woman navigating girlhood to womanhood, facing an apathetic society and the fickle (even malicious) men who they encounter, or even unfortunately love. Conde also spotlights the expectation women face to give up their personhood, to pour everything into their partner until they are nothing but a husk:
"they [men] suck away your time and your body and your ideas and your love and your nostalgia and your memories and your dreams and they brainwash you, telling you you're everything they'd been looking for. And they just suck and suck without giving anything in return" (Conde 27).
Each story is a heart laid raw, every page dripping with anguish to pull the heart of the reader. Whether it is a young woman knitting the sweater for her baby, a seamstress dealing with an incompetent employer, or a professor anguishing over the disappearance of her ethereal lover, Conde's dynamic characters encompass a greater telling of Mexican women's stories and how they overcome. Women on the Road is for the rebels and those who can't seem to catch a break. Fall into Conde's world and find solace there.
Dropping on March 25th, to celebrate Women's History Month, get your copy on the SDSU Press Website and at the Book Launch event!
