A promising debut, gripping in its honesty.
A tribute to the author’s fierce grandmother blossoms into a family saga brimming with heartache and love.
In the first part, Ramírez introduces readers to the resilient women who loomed large in her childhood in El Paso, Texas: her maternal great-grandmother, Máma Lupe; her hardworking mother, Leticia; and, above all, her fiery maternal grandmother, Ita. The fraught, tense relationship between Máma Lupe and Ita—highlighted in a spectacular chapter devoted to a day at church—exemplifies the knotty bonds that tie mother to daughter, a recurring theme. Throughout the text, Ramírez interweaves anecdotes of childhood nights spent in bars with Ita (tamer than it sounds); Ita’s poignant nightly rituals; details about Leticia’s work for Customs at the border separating El Paso and Juárez, filling the role of “the brown gatekeeper to other brown people.” The clear star of the book is Ita, an unforgettable, larger-than-life character. In one striking chapter, the author tells the stories behind the many scars that mark Ita’s body, a literal road map of the older woman’s life. Meanwhile, the men in young Ramírez’s life—an absent father, an overindulged uncle, a couple of boyfriends—make appearances as secondary characters, distant shadows at times. In the second part—in which the author moves into adolescence and young adulthood—Ita and Leticia fade into the background, and their absences dull the crackling vitality of the first half. However, it’s in the second half of the book that Ramírez crucially explores her waning relationship with her father. Her attempts over the years to reconnect—often half-hearted but always sincere—culminate in a final effort that seals their differences. Using conversational prose full of vivid imagery, the author successfully explores the many dimensions of her identity as a Mexican American woman.
A promising debut, gripping in its honesty.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-94762-755-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Lucci’s legion of fans will adore this gracious nod to her career longevity and positivity.
Daytime television’s most recognizable actress digs deeper in this second memoir.
Her career-defining, four decades–long stint on the daytime soap All My Children as the villainous Erica Kane has made Lucci a recognizable household name in daytime television circles. In this sophomore effort, comprised of a vivid and engaging collection of anecdotes and adventures, the actress reveals more intimate details of her struggles as well as her personal life and professional career. From the time she began performing in high school stage musicals, Lucci admits to always wanting to be onstage. Working through chronic shyness, her self-motivation and spirit drove her to pursue an acting career despite the many disappointments, callous dismissals, and various roadblocks that stood in her way. She expresses an open admiration for her parents, fellow performers who mentored her up the Hollywood ladder, and Muhammad Ali, who “owned his excellence,” as models of inspiration. Other sections reflect on her time as a working mother, the tricks to “growing old gracefully,” and how her faith, quest for joy, love of reading, and zest for life continue to sustain her. In an effort to create a more balanced memoir, Lucci also opens up to candidly share several sad and unsavory moments like being told she should probably abandon a career in television because she was too “ethnic looking”; the devastating day All My Children was canceled; the near loss of her son, Andreas, as an infant; and the feeling, upon the death of her husband, Helmut, in 2022, that the light within her “had gone out forever.” However crushing these events in her life were, they were counterbalanced with uplifting triumphs and only served as motivators to continue pushing forward to seek out the success and happiness she knew she deserved. With verve and perseverance, Lucci gleefully boasts about her starring roles in off-Broadway hits and concurrent film roles, yet, in her late 70s, she remains deeply grateful and humble and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Lucci’s legion of fans will adore this gracious nod to her career longevity and positivity.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798874868284
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
