Book Summary and Reviews of My Broken Language by Quiara Alegría Hudes

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Wendy

Boriuca Soul
Divided into named chapters, the memoir is given shape and texture from the chapters’ names.

When you speak more than one language, you are enriched. Her journey wanders through English to Spanish, through literature, from Quakerism and Santeria to music, from her mother’s family history in Puerto Rico to Philly and its suburbs to Yale. How do you build bridges? Are they even possible? Of course, they are. ¡Por supuesto!

Ever heard “when it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” (cuando no está roto, no lo arregle)? But, Quiara tries… a fierce search for identity to make sense of herself and her divided world, embracing her Boriuca roots that have their own magic to sooth her soul and find magic as a writer of plays in Grad School. And, spoiler alert, she finds it! Mi heroína!

Trying to string beads that don’t seem to fit on the string. Maybe she didn’t know that there was even a string to connect the dots of her fractured existence. Good for you Qui Qui!

A real page turner, although, you don’t want to go too fast. I re-read passages over and over to see and feel what I was missing. Hudes has such richness and honesty in her words. And for those of you who are not bilingüe, you will need a Spanish American dictionary, or at least an app on your phone to gather the meaning and texture of what Hudes writes, hears and feels throughout her life.
Enjoy and gain a little Boriuca soul!

SjD

An absorbing cultural blend!
This was an absorbing and often “eye opening” read.
The author was intelligent enough to take advantage of the educational opportunities provided for her, without losing her cultural identity.
I thoroughly enjoyed Quiara’s descriptions of the physical differences between the Puerto Rican women in her family and the current ideas of “American” female beauty.
Her relatives were able to appreciate their femininity in all of its shapes and forms. It was a shame that so many of them succumbed to the AIDS epidemic. The author is truly a “survivor”.

Dorinne

A Poetic Memoir
This memoir, so gorgeously written, takes us into the life of Quiara Hudes with her family of Puerto Rican immigrants in a barrio in Philadelphia. Hudes writes with a poetic zest about her training to become an accomplished and very talented musician. She produced a musical during her early years at Yale and went on to become a prize-winning playwright with the Broadway hit "In the Heights" and her Pulitzer-prize-winning drama "Water by the Spoonful." While Hudes’ world is certainly different from my world, with the Puerto Rican culture and Spanish innuendos, this is a story to be savored and a young woman to be admired for her perseverance and dedication, not to mention her immense talent!

Christine Clapp

Immersive Experience
By the woman who wrote the Broadway hit “In the Heights.” And a Pulitzer Prize winner. From West Philly, she shares her growing up there and the stark contrast of her neighborhood and family’s lives and history and culture vs her dad’s white world (“polite hell”) and the people and institutions she encountered at Yale. Her writing is genius. Found myself underlining passages to revisit her world and evoke the feelings again.

Qui Qui - to you, your mom, your Abuela, and all the Perez women: I see you and hear you. You said: “Say anything.” You said it all.

Jana

A compelling memoir
In this memoir, the author reflects on the contrast and difficulties involved in being part of the two languages and two cultures of her divorced parents – the large, noisy family of her Puerto Rican mother and the culture of her white, Jewish, hippie father, who lives on a farm in a Philadelphia Main Line suburb with his new family.

She deals with the effect of Aids and drugs on her Puerto Rican relatives, as well as the privilege that comes to her due to her white skin. Her search for how to express herself leads her to explore several creative outlets.

While the book is mostly chronological, there are chapters that seem like essays inserted into the narrative. Most of the imagery is very vivid, but especially in the beginning there are some images that seem forced or awkward.

All in all, a very interesting and compelling memoir about a girl caught between two cultures and trying to find her place in the world.

Juliana

the years in the making
My Broken Language by Quiara Alegría Hudes is a rich and complex text. A memoir written at the age of forty to record the years of learning that went into forging her identity, an identity including the multitudes in the Perez family. These are the years that went into finding the language that would do justice to her family’s stories, to her story.
It is growing up in her mother’s Hispanic family, more and more estranged in time from her father’s white one, that immerses Qui Qui into the family’s traditions and the rich Puerto Rican culture. Observing and helping out mom with her activism for Latina women, being present for the many family get-togethers at her Abuela’s, reading English classics but also books offered by her mom about Puerto Rican culture, listening to both Western classical music and music by Latino artists, learning about her family history of health struggles due to poverty and abuse (such as the birth control methods which had affected Puerto Rican women including her Abuela in the 50’s) or prejudice and silence (the AIDS cases in her family), Quiara Alegría Hudes paints the portrait of a young age, adolescence as well as young womanhood marked by strong, loving, feisty, sometimes ailing Perez women and a few men related to them, whose battles, victories and losses in North Philly all come together and to light under the pen of the one of them who made it to Yale and then to Brown. The cultures in which she lives reveal themselves in ways that Quiara Alegría Hudes learns to understand, make her own and then unleash with toppling force into the world, including the language of music which, like any language, says more to those with background and instruction in it.
This book cannot be gulped, it needs to be chewed and ruminated.

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