A frank, well-intentioned but uneven account of volunteering in Peru.
A former Peace Corps worker recalls her time spent in 1960s Peru in this debut memoir.
Raised by devout Roman Catholic parents, LaTorre spent her early years in the cowboy town of Ismay, Montana, before relocating in her teens to California, where her social development “crept along at a slow creek’s pace.” Life changed in her 20s when the experience of living in Latin American cultures “awakened my body and soothed my restless soul.” In 1963, she joined a group of 20-something female students who spent their summer vacation “performing good works” among Mexico’s disadvantaged communities. Her time spent in Apaseo, where, among other tasks, she helped set up a library, spurred her to join the Peace Corps the following year. The memoir recounts her training in New York and Puerto Rico before being assigned to Peru with the intention of engaging in community development work. On her 22nd birthday, the author found herself journeying through the Andes Mountains on her way to the town of Abancay, where she helped provide health care and also fell in love with Antonio, a local college student who tested her Catholic beliefs regarding intimacy. LaTorre presents a forthright and candid voice. She openly discusses how she found Latin men “enticing” and a “constant distraction.” Yet despite this attraction, she was protective of her independence, influenced by the strong women she grew up around in Montana. But her commentary on gender roles in other societies is sometimes surprising. She writes: “Domestic issues might interest most of the town’s females, but food preparation, childcare, and who was dating whom didn’t always interest us. We couldn’t understand local females’ submissiveness to their men.” There is little consideration of the obstacles to women’s liberation outside of America. Descriptions of Indigenous people also rely on stereotypes of otherness: “Small, dark, leather-skinned Indians.” LaTorre’s story is one of a determined young woman keen to achieve her goals; her relationship with Antonio will have readers guessing how the romance will turn out. Illustrated with the author’s photographs, this bold memoir offers many rich details about Peru and the Peace Corps. But readers may find some of the author’s descriptions of the country’s Native societies lack nuance.
A frank, well-intentioned but uneven account of volunteering in Peru.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-717-3
Page Count: 328
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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