Tales from the House of Vasquez

After giving birth to her son, Raquel Vasquez Gilliland had a nervous breakdown so severe her husband quit his job to help with the baby. Two years later, she examined the experience with poetry. Mental illness runs on her mother’s side of the family, with the Vasquez women specifically. As Gilliland searched for the reasons why these women suffered, she found stories. Some of these tales are from the lips of her mother, Maria Elena, and grandmother, Ofelia. Some tales are unearthed from the fertile dirt where poems grow. Put together, Tales From the House of Vasquez is an archetypal journey in verse.