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My Broken Language
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About This Book
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes tells her lyrical story of coming of age against the backdrop of an ailing Philadelphia barrio, with her sprawling idiosyncratic, love-and-trouble-filled Puerto Rican family as a collective muse. Quiara Alegría Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced in her grandmother's tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her aunts and uncles and cousins, but haunted by the secrets of the family and the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio--even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars. Her family became her private pantheon, a gathering circle of powerful orisha-like women with tragic real-world wounds, and she vowed to tell their stories--but first she'd have to get off the stairs and join the dance. She'd have to find her language. Weaving together Hudes's love of books with the stories of her family, the lessons of North Philly with those of Yale, this is an inspired exploration of home, memory, and belonging--narrated by an obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty.
Reviews
"a play of a memoir, a dramedy complete with memorable scenes that powerfully replicate the themes of family separation and cultural alienation ..."
"in this extraordinary memoir [Hudes] actually remakes language so that it speaks to her world ..."
"Readers feel the tension of Hudes' adolescent and college years as she's trying to figure out how to be; she doesn't allow for easy binaries, nor does she attack who or what makes her question herself as she explores what it's like to be a Latina girl, and later a Latina woman, in contemporary U.S."
"A beautifully written account of the importance of culture and family in a small but powerful community."
"Recollections of her mother's and grandmother's upbringings in Puerto Rico are rich with detail, as are depictions of aunts, uncles, and cousins who find their way in and around Philadelphia."
"Delightful phrases and vivid images abound."
"The fine-tuned storytelling is studded with sharply turned phrases ..."
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