Woodcuts of Women [Hardcover]

Dagoberto Gilb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2000

Dagoberto Gilb is an acknowledged master of the short story, the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, and a PEN/Faulkner finalist for his debut collection, The Magic of Blood, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his fiction writing. His critically acclaimed collection Woodcuts of Women is now available in paperback and features ten moving and heartbreaking stories of lust, love, and longing among men and women struggling to find their way in the world. Written in Gilb's spare, humid language, each of these haunting stories is crafted with a poetic, aching beauty. At turns powerful and resonant, hopeful and humorous, Woodcuts of Women is a tour de force by one of America's foremost Latino writers. "The sheer intensity and bravado of [Gilb's] vision make this collection succeed." -- Jean Thompson, The New York Times Book Review "Lonely, tough stories -- stories that force us to confront what's difficult in us, and in the people we love." -- Adrienne Miller, Esquire "Gilb's stories read like verbal woodcuts deliberately unrefined and carefully unadorned, clear in their intent but without undue elaboration...." -- Sean Glennon, The Hartford Courant "...Gilb writes of the gritty passions of man for women, grand delusions and tender mercies...." -- Oscar C. Villalon, San Francisco Chronicle

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mexican-American men and women in pursuit of sex and spiritual sustenance inhabit the 10 stories featured in Gilb's second collection, set mostly in El Paso, Tex. Lucky in love but unwilling to settle down, the male protagonists are possessed of a collective roving eye and seek out the prototypical mysterious female strangerDin department stores, on the street, in airport lounges. Whether consumed by their surroundingsDlike R. Fernandez, in "Hueco," who lives in an entirely blue apartmentDor by passion, they are often left drained and despondent by their adventures. In "Shout," a brief but intense account of domestic disquietude, a beer-guzzling husband, home after a long day's work, vents his rage. "The Pillows" tells of itinerant George, who crashes at a high school buddy's apartment only to be overwhelmed by the pathos evident in his friend's grimy linens. Another drifter, Willie, ends up house-sitting for a gringa, Irene, in "About Tere Who Was in Palomas." Obsessed with thoughts of his ex-girlfriend, he ignores Irene's advances. In the best stories, the conflicts sparked are left hauntingly unresolved; in others, the lack of resolution seems rote and empty. As the book's title suggests, outlines or crude impressions of women are often all the men are capable of seeing in these elliptical tales. Gilb's fluent, colloquial prose, with its frequent detours into Spanglish, keeps his fictions fresh, as does his honest reckoning with life in the grittier suburbs of the Southwest. Though he is still working out some kinks, GilbDauthor of the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning story collection The Magic of Blood, a novel and a number of widely anthologized essaysDis a writer to watch. Agent, Kim Witherspoon. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Gilb, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for his first collection, The Magic of Blood, crafts steamy stories featuring women protagonists.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 167 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st edition (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802116795
• ISBN-13: 978-0802116796
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,046,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dagoberto Gilb was born and raised in Los Angeles and lived as many years in El Paso. He now lives in Austin. Gilb's books have won the PEN/Hemingway Award and have been finalists for the PEN Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award. He edited Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature, the canonical volume of Texas Mexican literature, which won the Southwest Book Award for nonfiction. Anthologized widely, recipient of awards including a Guggenheim and Whiting, his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a range of magazines including Harper's, The New Yorker, and The Threepenny Review. Gilb spent most of his adult years as a construction worker and a journeyman, high-rise carpenter with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. Writer-in-residence at the University of Houston-Victoria, he is also the executive director of Centro Victoria: Center for Mexican American Literature and Culture.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gilb Cuts Deeply into Love of Women, May 11, 2001

By 

Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Woodcuts of Women (Hardcover)

Dagoberto Gilb's "Woodcuts of Women" is one of the most honest, entertaining, well-crafted short story collections about love and lust that I've read in a long while. Gilb doesn't spare us when he allows his male characters to delve deeply into their obsessions with the opposite sex. In "Maria de Covina," the first story in the collection, a young Chicano (nineteen but he thinks he passes for twenty) simply tells us: "This is the thing: I like women. No, wait. I love women." In "The Pillows," the male protagonist, Jorge, thinks he figured out why his pocho friend, Danny, is having women problems: the only pillows he owns are old, raggedy and dirty. Jorge is obsessed about this particularly while housesitting for Danny. Jorge tells his own girlfriend: "I can't imagine a woman getting in a bed with those pillows. I can't imagine a woman wanting to, even to take a nap." Some of the stories are heartbreaking, like "Shout," where poverty pushes a man to be abusive to his wife and children; even here, there is a glimmer of hope, hope based on love of women. Gilb is a master at ambiguities, our ambiguities as people searching for companionship. The only bad thing about this book is that it is too short (a mere 167 pages).

Much praise is also due to the artist, Artemio Rodriguez, who illustrated each story with linocuts (similar to woodcuts); these illustrations capture the wonder, danger and craziness of loving women too much.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read It Like A Novel, June 19, 2001

By 

Anthony Park (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Woodcuts of Women (Hardcover)

Some books can slap you awake.. Gilb's "Woodcuts of Women" is like that. It was like I'd been asleep and it woke me up and I had energy again. There is not a story in this collection that can't be read more than once. the best book I've read in years. I am not a person who usually like short story collections, they are usually like "assignments" in creative writing classes that please teachers. I read novels. But this collecton isn't like a collection of stories. It's arranged around maybe not one "theme", though all of them are about love and sex and sex and love, and all that confusion about love. It's better and deeper than that. It is chicano, but its not just a chicano book. Not about it only. Like "100 Years of Solitude" is about Columbia but not about Columbia only. No, the whole of it takes your breath away. Sure its the fine writing Gilb has-poetic writing and scenes that, common as they might seem to be, make you feel like you've seen it for the first time. Chicano Zen?.

I got on amazon.com to write this, never written one before. I don't usualy rave about books.

The stories have a wide scope, even if on the other hand they are all so much the same. The last one titled "Snow" was maybe the finest. About a man going to New York because his girlfriend is pregnant. There's a scene (imagined) in an abortion clinic that is the saddest. And the end. The snow and the silence on Broadway Ave in NYC. That is the end of the whole book, the mood. Silence. Everything changed.

I think anyone would love the story "Bottoms." It was wild funny. About this gigantic woman, she keeps getting bigger and bigger, a fantasy and not, who decides to have this journalist who is all messed up about someone else. There's a story about "Tere" who he fantasizes about while he's staying with another woman, while some other woman he's staying with wants him to fall in love with her. This book isn't about only men or only women, we all act and feel this, all of us are confused and conflicted about love. Battling one dream that we lost while getting another that we can't pay attention to. I could go on more and about every story.

I mentioned Marquez. I read Gilb's novel before. It's not Marquez like in the slightest, it is more European, or Steinbeck, but it has the depth of an major book. And I'd only read a few of his stories in "The Magic of Blood". (I plan to get that and really sit down with it because it's suppose to be great). But his "Woodcuts of Women", I wll say, is an American Marquez. Beautiful and profound. Someone says it is short It might not be that many pages but evey single page counts, and you read every sentence. Not like so many books. It is just right, no padding. I guarantee you will love this book as much as I do

Anthony Park Chicago, Illinois

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MORE THAN 5 STARS, August 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Woodcuts of Women (Hardcover)

if I could give woodcuts of women more stars i would...it is so good...it is the best book i read this summer...i have been hearing about it for a couple of months now and so i decided i would have to read it and i did. yes it is about love and sex but it is about alot more too. and if you watch how beautiful is the writing not to mention the deeper thouhgts that it creates...a profound book by a writer who understands and loves woman and not just sex altough i think he obviosuly does...i recommend this book especially to women. because we do not always think of men as this aware of us. i read a review that said gilb made them to idealized in woodcuts if that is so i want to be idealized then. go buy this book, the art fits to it too.