Evangelina Vigil-Piñón is one of the first writers from the Chicano community to capture the essence of the barrio--its sounds, its rituals, and its characters--from a perspective that transcends generational boundaries. She has accomplished this feat with a skillful, literary adaptation of oral language--whether Spanish or English or a blend of the two. Her work has always been characterized by a diversity of themes. Even as she was writing about the melancholy sound of the cicadas or the old-timers sitting around the plaza on a Sunday afternoon in their Stetsons, she was also writing bitingly satirical poems about the hypocrisy and macho posturing of some of her contemporaries. Her talent for putting sounds and images together won her early recognition. During a period when few Chicana authors were recognized, Vigil-Piñón was already seeing her poems printed in many periodical publications around the...