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Mother island : a memoir  Cover Image Book Book

Mother island : a memoir

Figueroa, Jamie (author.).

Record details

  • ISBN: 0553387685
  • ISBN: 9780553387681
  • Physical Description: pages cm
    print
  • Edition: First edition.
  • Publisher: New York : Pantheon Books, [2024]

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note: The Stories I Haven't Been Told -- Disappeared by Husband, Part I -- Changing Shape, Part I -- La Última Vez -- Religious/Affliction -- Disappeared by Husband, Part II -- Mother Tongues -- Mi Familia or The Spaces in Between -- Changing Shape, Part II.
Summary, etc.: "A searing and deeply personal memoir that explores the institutions--family, society, country--that defined a Puerto Rican woman and what she unlearned to rediscover herself. Growing up in the Midwest, raised by a Puerto Rican mother who was abandoned by her family, Jamie Figueroa and her sisters were estranged from their culture, consumed by the whiteness that surrounded them. In Mother Island, Figueroa traces her search for identity as shaped by and against a mother who settled into the safety of assimilation. In lyrical, blistering prose, Figueroa recalls a childhood in Ohio in which she was relegated to the background of her mother's string of failed marriages; her own marriage in her early twenties to a man twice her age; how her work as a licensed massage therapist helped her heal her body trauma; and how becoming a mother has reshaped her relationship to her family and herself. Only as an adult in New Mexico was Figueroa able to forge her own path, using writing to recast her origin story. In a journey that takes her to Puerto Rico and back, Figueroa looks to her ancestors to reimagine her relationship to the past and to her mother's native island, reaching beyond her own mother into a greater experience of mothering and claiming herself. In stunning prose that draws from Puerto Rican folklore and mythology, a literary lineage of women writers of color, and narratives of identity, Figueroa presents a cultural coming-of-age story. Candid and raw, Mother Island gets to the heart of the question: Who do we become when we are no longer trying to be someone else?"--
Subject: Figueroa, Jamie
Puerto Rican women Ohio Biography
Puerto Rican women Ohio Ethnic identity
Mothers and daughters Ohio
Puerto Rican women New Mexico Santa Fe Biography
Puerto Rican women New Mexico Santa Fe Ethnic identity
Figueroa, Jamie Travel Puerto Rico San Juan
San Juan (P.R.) Social life and customs
Santa Fe (N.M.) Biography
Ohio Biography

Available copies

  • 3 of 3 copies available at Bibliomation.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 3 total copies.
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Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Black Rock Branch - Bridgeport B FIGUEROA (Text) 34000151517109 Adult Biography Available -
The Brookfield Library 921/FIGUEROA (Text) 34029155442758 Adult New Nonfiction Available -
Willimantic Public Library BIO FIGUEROA (Text) 34036149414447 Adult New Nonfiction Available -


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