Donna Gershten

Donna Gershten is the author of Kissing the Virgin's Mouth (2000) the winner of the inaugural Bellwether Prize for fiction.

She was born in North Carolina and lived in Mexico while working as a fitness instructor. She received a master of fine arts in creative writing from Warren Wilson College,and now divides her time between the Huerfano Valley in southern Colorado and Denver.^[1]

Kissing the Virgin's Mouth is the story of a woman who uses the tools available to her to escape from poverty and an extremely rigid traditional life in Mexico: her brains and her sex. Despite being forced to focus on her own survival, she has a saving grace, as it were, in her belief in 'gratitude'. By middle age, when she returns to Mexico from the United States with her new lover, she realises that despite her tough life she has grown and opened in ways that would not have been possible had she stayed. The book is a poignant tribute to women who dare to risk 'going bad'. The author reveals one seed of the book

In telling me about her childhood, a Mexican friend once said, "My father walked the malecón with his girlfriends every Sunday instead of his family and my mother, llore, llore, llore, crying at her table. I told myself that no man would make me cry at my table, that no man would use me, though occasionally, I have had to use the man." My friend's honesty and straightforwardness knocked my politically correct socks off. It delighted me.^[2]

References

1. ^ Harper Collins author profile
2. ^ Harper Collins author interview

Reviews

• Jules Siegal ‘Daily battles of Mexican Women: two novels explore the country’s feminine side’ San Francisco Chronicle Sunday 11 March 2001
• Review by Achy Obejas in Village Voice 27 Mar 2001

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Name	Gershten, Donna
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