The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda

By Sonia Rivera-Valdés

Marta Veneranda, a Latina neoyorkina, finds that she inspires the confessional in people. In fact, when people come to her, they feel the need to reveal their most embarrassing and shameful stories. And through these reluctantly told tales, where characters enter and leave each other's narrations, Rivera-Valdes revisits and questions our most basic behavioral assumptions.
In "Little Poisons," the narrator shares with Marta the minutiae of her self-help book-assisted liberation from her philandering husband, whom she will eventually poison to death, and whose mistress she will befriend: "In the fifteen years of marriage he would tell me everything, even about his sexual escapades-if he couldn't share them with me, who would he share them with? Besides, that way no one could come running to me spreading rumors."
Beneath the humor is a dead-serious scrutiny of the commingling of Anglo and Latino cultures. At heart, the stories are an expos of the comforts and discomforts of that cohabitation.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158322047X
• ISBN13: 9781583220474
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

The Little Book that Could, and Did.

An incredible collection of stories that will make you gasp and ask for more. I originally read this book in spanish but even when it's translated, it doesn't lose any of it's magic. As you read this book and indulge in the many characters' lives, you realize that they belong to the author's imagination as much as they belong to our wonder and just as much as they belong to our own lives. After every story I had to sit back an process the incredible story I had just read. Rivera-Valdez uses her ease with words to paint not just a portrait of each character, but a landscape. Not only are you able to fully enjoy the secrets in the stories, but you will find yourself wondering what goes on behind your own neighbors' curtains.