Woodcuts of Women: Stories

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.

i don't read very many books by men but we have been hearing about this one and so i decided to buy it. I wish dagoberto gilb was in love with me, because i would love to be treated so well. sometiems we don't know how men think of us. here it is. i wish there were more stories in it, i hated that it ended so soon.

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.

Author Gilb brings to the reading public a marvelous work of short stories depicting life in his culture with an indepth knowledge of human behavior. He peers deep into emotion, love, and the commonality of ordinary life with wisdom and honesty and displays his keen artistic ability touching the pulse of human mankind. He equates his vast abilities using bits and pieces and brushes for all of us via the pen, stories that touch life's precious moments. This evening Author Gilb I was privileged to view your interview on national television. May I offer my congratulations to you as a fellow American, on your outstanding contribution to the literary world. You build your stories with great ability. Wish you much success and I'm looking forward to your novel, which I believe you indicated is under construction.