American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood
by Marie Arana
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Book Summary Information
Author: Marie AranaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-05-28
ISBN: 0385319630
Number of pages: 309
Publisher: Delta Trade Paperback
Book Reviews of American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood
Book Review: A symphony of words
Summary: 5 Stars
What a joy to read. Little pieces of information about characters, surroundings, history and culture are put in place like parts of a growing poetic jigsaw puzzle. Although no child this young could be so insightful, the framework enables the author to use the innocence of childhood to view the world in a questioning, accepting way, opening up her world in Peru to the reader like a flower opening slowly petal by petal in the morning. Very mature insights and descriptions of those around her are presented in a very gentle way. The vivid description of the depraved treatment by overseers of the Peruvian natives who were used to gather rubber from the trees tore at this reader's heart by the magnificence of the writing rather than by gory heavyhanded writing. Fragments of the jigsaw puzzle of life are blended together as the author moves between individual backgrounds, current insights, historical information, explanations of cultural patterns, vivid descriptions of personalities and a storyline that tells how a mother, father and three children see their ongoing lives as viewed thru the eyes of a very mature child.
The book whispers rather than shouts, a rare thing these days.
Summary of American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood
In her father?s Peruvian family, Marie Arana was taught to be a proper lady, yet in her mother?s American family she learned to shoot a gun, break a horse, and snap a chicken?s neck for dinner. Arana shuttled easily between these deeply separate cultures for years. But only when she immigrated with her family to the United States did she come to understand that she was a hybrid American whose cultural identity was split in half. Coming to terms with this split is at the heart of this graceful, beautifully realized portrait of a child who ?was a north-south collision, a New World fusion. An American Chica.?Here are two vastly different landscapes: Peru?earthquake-prone, charged with ghosts of history and mythology?and the sprawling prairie lands of Wyoming. In these rich terrains resides a colorful cast of family members who bring Arana?s historia to life...her proud grandfather who one day simply stopped coming down the stairs; her dazzling grandmother, ?clicking through the house as if she were making her way onstage.? But most important are Arana?s parents: he a brilliant engineer, she a gifted musician. For more than half a century these two passionate, strong-willed people struggled to overcome the bicultural tensions in their marriage and, finally, to prevail.
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