NAKED LADIES

Fiction. NAKED LADIES, the second novel by Alma Luz Villanueva, revolves around the lives of four remarkable and intriguing women. In this work, Villanueva explores interracial and interethnic relationships between Chicanas, Anglos, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans at the deepest cultural and sexual levels. Villanueva considers racial prejudices and how they play out in male-female relationships, the physical abuse of women and the retribution that women exact from men, AIDS, and aspects of both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. The title of the novel, taken from wild flowers called "naked ladies," evokes the life and death battles of these women: they are vulnerable to the worst elements of this world, yet, as part of the natural cycle, they remain resilient.