The Ladies Gallery: A Memoir of Family Secrets
Autor Irene Vilar Carlin Romano Traducere de Gregory Rabassaen Limba Engleză Paperback – 30 sep 2009
Eleven years after her mother's death, Vilar awakens in a psychiatric hospital after her own suicide attempt and begins to face the devastating inheritance of abandonment and suicide passed down from her grandmother and mother. The familial pattern of self-destruction flings open the doors to her national inheritance and the search for identity. Alternating between Vilar's notes from the ward and the unraveling of her family's secrets, this lyrical and powerful memoir of three generations of Puerto Rican women is urgent, impassioned, and unforgettable.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781590513231
ISBN-10: 1590513231
Pagini: 322
Dimensiuni: 139 x 208 x 27 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Editura: Other Press (NY)
ISBN-10: 1590513231
Pagini: 322
Dimensiuni: 139 x 208 x 27 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Editura: Other Press (NY)
Notă biografică
Irene Vilar was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. She is the author of Impossible Motherhood (Other Press, 2009). The Ladies' Gallery was a Philadelphia Inquirer and Detroit Free Press notable book of the year and was short-listed for the 1999 Mind Book of the Year Award. She is a literary agent and editor of The Americas series at Texas Tech University Press.
Extras
MARCH 1, 1954. In the afternoon, a young woman together with three men entered the House of Representatives of the United States of America and opened fire. Next day, the front page of the New York Times would show the same woman wrapped in the revolutionary flag of Puerto Rico, her left fist raised high. What the Times would not quote were her words, "I did not come here to kill. I came here to die." An old battle cry of Puerto Rican nationalism. She would be sentenced to fifty-seven years in prison for assault and conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.
MARCH 1, 1977. On the twenty-third anniversary of the attack on Congress, her daughter commits suicide in Puerto Rico. The mother is flown secretly to the island for a day to attend the funeral.
FEBRUARY 1, 1988. A gray winter day: the daughter's daughter becomes a suicidepatient at Hutchings Psychiatric Hospital, in Syracuse, New York. Repetition informs my life. A teacher of mine once told me not to fear repetition, "Just don't be blacklisted by it." Well, I am the product of repetitions. Of family secrets. Every family has its own; usually it is the untold family story a child is destined unwittingly to repress, or to repeat. We inherit these secrets the way we inherit shame, guilt, desire. And we repeat.
MARCH 1, 1977. On the twenty-third anniversary of the attack on Congress, her daughter commits suicide in Puerto Rico. The mother is flown secretly to the island for a day to attend the funeral.
FEBRUARY 1, 1988. A gray winter day: the daughter's daughter becomes a suicidepatient at Hutchings Psychiatric Hospital, in Syracuse, New York. Repetition informs my life. A teacher of mine once told me not to fear repetition, "Just don't be blacklisted by it." Well, I am the product of repetitions. Of family secrets. Every family has its own; usually it is the untold family story a child is destined unwittingly to repress, or to repeat. We inherit these secrets the way we inherit shame, guilt, desire. And we repeat.
Recenzii
The Women's Review of Books
Lolita Lebrón's granddaughter, heir to the most public female embodiment of heroic self-sacrifice in Puerto Rico in this century, has written a memoir full of searing, intimate truths, silences broken open to reveal the personal costs of public mythmaking . . .A momentous act of courage."
Boston Globe
This memoir introduces us to a writer bound to make an impact . . . An autobiography as fantastic as any novel . . .It is a mark of Vilar's art that her story seems warm and alive."
St. Louis Post - Dispatch
Just as artist Frida Kahlo's splintered self-portraits and diaries personify Mexico's proud yet fragmented self-image, Vilar' s intimate accounts about herself and her family personalize Puerto Rico's political, social, and cultural wars for its identity."
Philadelphia Inquirer, Notable Book of the Year
Startling, raw, and affecting, a painful exercise in which memoir as therapy becomes memoir as art."
Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)
Stunning. A lyrical and visionary memoir of depression, Puerto Rican identity, and young womanhood."
Lolita Lebrón's granddaughter, heir to the most public female embodiment of heroic self-sacrifice in Puerto Rico in this century, has written a memoir full of searing, intimate truths, silences broken open to reveal the personal costs of public mythmaking . . .A momentous act of courage."
Boston Globe
This memoir introduces us to a writer bound to make an impact . . . An autobiography as fantastic as any novel . . .It is a mark of Vilar's art that her story seems warm and alive."
St. Louis Post - Dispatch
Just as artist Frida Kahlo's splintered self-portraits and diaries personify Mexico's proud yet fragmented self-image, Vilar' s intimate accounts about herself and her family personalize Puerto Rico's political, social, and cultural wars for its identity."
Philadelphia Inquirer, Notable Book of the Year
Startling, raw, and affecting, a painful exercise in which memoir as therapy becomes memoir as art."
Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)
Stunning. A lyrical and visionary memoir of depression, Puerto Rican identity, and young womanhood."
Descriere
Alternating between Vilar's notes from the psychiatric ward and the unraveling of her family's secrets, "The Ladies' Gallery" is a razor-sharp memoir of three generations of Puerto Rican women caught in a cycle of self-destruction.