Prospero's Daughter

O'Connell...carefully and cogently places Castellanos' interests in gender issues within the context of her concerns for indigenismo...so that the reader appreciates how Castellanos' considerations about women expand to implicate racism and exploitation in Mexico. ~Sandra Messinger Cypess, University of Maryland, author of La Malinche in Mexican Literature: From History to Myth

The title of this superb book emphasizes the analogy between the role of Miranda in Shakespeare's The Tempest and that of Rosario Castellanos herself. As O'Connell explains in her gendered reading of the familiar Caliban trope, these women—privileged yet subordinated in their respective cultures—act as mediators between the colonising and indigenous peoples; both identify with, and speak on behalf of, the father and learn to read from his books, yet they also claim a women's voice and refuse to endorse social injustice.... The subtle and informed readings of such a wide range of prose works in relation to this paradigmatic trope make the book a pleasure to read. ~Bulletin of Latin American Research