Love War Stories

In the first story, “El qué dirán,” it’s been seven years since Lola’s husband left Puerto Rico to work in America and no one thinks he’s coming back, but Lola has hope. She receives weekly love letters from him. The neighbors know that talk is cheap, even written words are cheap. There are other women who have been in the same position as Lola, young married women that get left behind when their husbands travel for work. They predict that Lola will be abandoned just like they were.Twenty-four year old Lola hasn’t made any progress in her life. She lives with her sister’s family and they support her. Lola’s job seems to be that of faithful woman yearning for her husband, waiting for his return. She puts him on a pedestal, idealizing him and their love. Their reunion gets put off indefinitely when Lola receives a break-up letter from him. Lola reacts to her husband’s letter by coming unhinged. She is completely shattered and humiliated.Because she has been living in a fantasy world for years, her family is exasperated with her. They have no sympathy. Lola has no friends, no dreams, no goals, or sense of purpose outside of the marriage that she invested in so deeply.The other Puerto Rican women in this story collection are strong and often tragic. These stories gave me chills for their insight into the human condition and for the telling details that the author wrote. Ivelisse Rodriguez’s work reminds me of Federico García Lorca and Anton Chekhov. There are also shades of Charles Dickens i.e. Miss Havisham in my favorite story from this collection, “El qué dirán”. I’m excited to read more work from Ivelisse Rodriguez; her stories really resonated with me.

A former professor of mine once pointed out that we love to hear stories about ourselves but we also relish being taken into into secret subcultures that we don't belong to. This story collection did both for me. Not having grown up inside the Newyorican enclaves (counting big cities in MA and NJ), I loved being escorted on a tour of that world. In Holyoke, Mass: An Ethonography, I feel like I slipped into a bathroom stall unseen and was getting a rare and fascinating glimpse into what the tough girls say when they think they're alone. In The Belindas, a young woman is so destroyed by a breakup that she obliterates her former self by eating until she becomes unrecognizably obese. In La Hija de Changó, a scholarship winner to a prestigious NY private school negotiates that world she comes from with the one that beckons--and it's not as easy as you would think. My favorites were Some Springs Girls Do Die for its short, poetic beauty and sharp contrast between the thrill of falling in love and the haunting death of a classmate. The story that held up a mirror was Love Wars, which was about the culture and generational wars between mothers and daughters. Ivelisse Rodriguez's writing is clear-eyed and clean, authoritative, tough, and tender at the same time. I loved it and recommend it. Great for syllabi in women's studies, Latin American Studies, and fiction writing courses.

The themes of the insightful short story collection, Love War Stories, resonate. Rodriguez' stories of love and heartache, girls and women, the search for true love, and women's experiences with loss, are unflinching and raw. I picked up the book and read straight through to the end. My favorite story in the collection is "The Simple Truth" for our shared love of the Puerto Rican poet, Julia de Burgos. A wonderful debut by Ivelisse Rodriguez, bravo.

This is an exceptionally well written book that demonstrates how love and heart break transcends across generations of women. Each story is unique on its own, yet connects the theme of love, what that love means, what love looks like, how it is manifested and most importantly how it is shown and experienced by different women.

I love these stories and all that they offer. As I read, I am constantly thinking of friends who need to read this book. Fabulous imagery, voice, and themes that are rarely, if at all, visited. More please!!!

Each story managed to deliver such an impact by the end that I had to stop and think about what I was feeling or to just sit and let the feeling(s) wash over me for a while. This book affects me the way some poems do, but the stories flow so easily, so unassuming that the emotional punch at the end is surprising. It almost like magic.

The stories are hard to follow. I found myself having to reread so many of the same pages to find clarity in the stories. The first few were good; confusing.. but still attention grabbing at the least. I expected much more from this book. The change in scenes as well as POV were horribly transitioned.

It’s been 4 years since I’ve read a book cover to cover. I couldn’t put this one down. I only read two to three stories a night in order to have something to read the following night.Love War Stories is the story of all Boricua girls growing up in homes where men treat the hearts of women as disposable. Every story resonated with me. I’m looking forward to the next book by Ivelisse.