I had an unusual relationship with this book. I started out very much disliking it, and ended the book very much enjoying it. The collection offers three plays by Cherrie Moraga, and I hated the first, liked the second, and thought the third piece was a fine work of drama. It's rare that I have a reading experience that gradually and steadily gets better until the end.

I'm not sure if the first play was poorly done or not. But as a new mother, I just can't handle a lot of reading right now that has a three-year-old getting molested by a teen (no matter how quick the touch) and a twelve-year-old being raped by an adult. It makes my skin crawl on the inside. Reasons enough for me to intensely dislike Giving Up the Ghost.

I was hesitant when I started the second play. I just wanted to read it as quickly as possible and get the book over with. Fortunately, Shadow of a Man was much more suited to my tastes. It featured a Hispanic family preparing for the wedding of their son to a white woman, and the friction that this event causes unleashes problems of the past that eventually consume and destroy the father.

The final play, Heroes and Saints, was by far the best. The background is the civil rights movement that proceeded on behalf of Mexican farm workers who were being poisoned by the pesticides that owners used to clean their crops. Moraga does not focus on Cesar Chavez or Dolores Huerta, or other factual members of the movement, but creates a fictional town in the valley that is having unnaturally high child illness and mortality rates. One of the main characters, Cerezita, is a girl born with the defect of having no arms or legs, only a torso and head. She put the little town on the map when she was born, and it's in the news again, this time because someone is taking the dead bodies of the children afflicted by the poison and putting them on crucifixes in the vineyards. The play focuses on Cere's family and their neighbor as they become increasingly involved in the movement. A compelling story, taut with tension. This play made me willing to overlook the first play and keep the book. ( )