Nosotras: Opening the Door to Our Love Life

The book Nosotras, Opening the Door to Our Love Life, which has all the ingredients of a novel, is in fact true and autobiographical. The book covers the last four decades of the life of Ofelia Fox, wife of the owner of the famous cabaret Tropicana of Havana, who went into exile and became the first female Spanish radio personality in Miami. She later co-authored Tropicana Nights, The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Night Club.

Ofelia met Rosa Sánchez and, unexpectedly, they became love partners. Their relationship lasted over four decades.

In 1964 Ofelia and Rosa moved to Hollywood, and from then on the two faced their life together with an adventurous spirit and an unshakeable devotion for each other. They raised Rosa's boy, Toto, now a successful businessman in Southern California who is happily married and has three sons.

Ofelia and Rosa never stopped creating and writing. The combination of Ofelia's banking career with Rosa's role as one of the first female chief financial officers in a West Coast advertising agency enabled them to be passionate part-time writers. The couple won many awards and were best profiled in the highly regarded Women Playwrights of Diversity: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook by Jane T. Peterson and Suzanne Bennett, published in 1997: "Los Angeles based Rosa Sanchez and Ofelia Fox use theater to promote social awareness and have written extensively in both English and Spanish for radio, television, and the theater. They combine comedy with serious themes, particularly those that affect women and Latinos. In their plays they bring to the surface homosexuality and AIDS...."

The Fox-Sanchez hillside home had been a hub for many activities, but recounting publicly the couple's four decades of intimacy was not in Rosa's plans. But eventually, and not without trepidation, she recognized that Nosotras, Opening the Door to Our Love Life was an uplifting story begging to be shared. She had begun to write this book when she was still a very youthful 77-year-old, full of vitality, dreams and enthusiasm - years before the diagnosis of cancer was a threat to their world. And so it was that Rosa found the way to, again, work with her favorite collaborator: Ofelia. In her "spiritual testament", Ofelia describes their journey as "...thirty nine years of the life of two souls who played the game of love, oblivious of Destiny's dirty tricks."

Nosotras, Opening the Door to Our Love Life, is candidly written, charming, uplifting, and appropriate for everyone. It extols unconditional love, exudes faith in God and Destiny, and decidedly opens, not only the door to their love life, but to other spiritual concepts that are slowly coming out of the closet.

©2009 Rosalie G. Sanchez (P)2013 Rosalie G. Sanchez