Mother Island : : a Daughter Claims Puerto Rico
Book - 2024 Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / General / Figueroa, Jamie, 921 Figueroa, Jamie 1 On Shelf No requests on this item
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Call Number: Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / General / Figueroa, Jamie, 921 Figueroa, Jamie
On Shelf At: Pittsfield Branch
Location & Checkout Length | Call Number | Checkout Length | Item Status |
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Pittsfield Adult Books, NEW Spring 4-week checkout |
Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / General / Figueroa, Jamie | 4-week checkout | On Shelf |
Downtown 1st Floor, NEW Spring 4-week checkout |
921 Figueroa, Jamie | 4-week checkout | Due 05-01-2024 |
The Stories I Haven't Been Told -- Disappeared by Husband, Part I -- Changing Shape, Part I -- La Ăšltima Vez -- Religious/Affliction -- Disappeared by Husband, Part II -- Mother Tongues -- Mi Familia or The Spaces in Between -- Changing Shape, Part II.
"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?"-- Provided by publisher.
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PUBLISHED
New York : Pantheon Books, [2024]
Year Published: 2024
Description: 245 p.
Language: English
Format: Book
ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9780553387681
0553387685
SUBJECTS
Figueroa, Jamie.
Figueroa, Jamie -- Travel -- San Juan.
Puerto Rican women -- Ohio -- Biography.
Puerto Rican women -- Ohio -- Ethnic identity.
Mothers and daughters -- Ohio.
Puerto Rican women -- Santa Fe -- Biography.
Puerto Rican women -- Santa Fe -- Ethnic identity.
San Juan (P.R.) -- Social life and customs.
Santa Fe (N.M.) -- Biography.
Ohio -- Biography.
Travel writing.
Autobiographies.