Gringa Latina: A Woman of Two Worlds [Hardcover]

Gabriella De Ferrari (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 1995

For the readers of Laura Esquivel and Isabelle Allende, this memoir of a girlhood in Peru is seen from the very different vantage point of an adulthood in the United States. Gabriella De Ferrari, the author of the acclaimed novel A Cloud on Sand, grew up in Peru the daughter of gringos, or foreigners: her parents had come from Italy as newlyweds to set down roots in an exotic and alluring country far from home. Gringa Latina is the account of De Ferrari's privileged upbringing in the small desert town of Tacna, surrounded by the silent Andes. She recalls the wonders of her mother's inventive cuisine, an inspired melding of Italian and Peruvian ingredients; her friendship with her neighbor Se-orita Luisa, doomed to be an old maid because her betrothed left her for someone else; her ties to Saturnina, the Indian maid who taught her about curses and miracles; and her admiration for her father, the trusted sage of their town. Eventually De Ferrari attended college in the United States, whe

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born in Peru of Italian immigrant parents, curator and novelist De Ferrari (A Cloud on Sand) here offers a memoir "saturated with powerful echoes and profound longings for a place I can never leave behind." The author writes elegantly about a local culture she first learned through black-clad neighbors and Indian maids. She recalls her dignified, decent father, her mother's passage from an Italian convent to become a wife in Peru and her parents' roles as unofficial Italian ambassadors in the town of Tacna. She recounts grade school alienation and the enthusiastic college roommate who taught her Americanisms. Though De Ferrari tells little of her adulthood, in some chapters she contrasts past and present: Tacna has become a city and, like so much of Peru, is now a place of drugs and fear. And De Ferrari observes that she has gained an American openness that differs markedly from the behavior of cousins she meets in Italy. A neat postscript to this sensitive trek across boundaries includes some of her mother's Peruvian-Italian recipes. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA?An autobiography of an American art curator and writer who grew up in Peru. Her father was a successful businessman and honorary Italian consul; her mother was noted for her melding of Italian and Peruvian cooking. The book is a series of short vignettes about the village and its residents, one of which introduces a pilot named "gringo Cooper," who takes Gabriella and her father for a plane ride. The author also relates a conversation with Cooper after her father's death. The ability to move back and forth in time effortlessly is one of De Ferrari's talents. She is also skilled at setting a tone and sketching characters with few words. A book that should have wide appeal.?Clodagh Lee, Fairfax County Public Library
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (April 21, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395709342
• ISBN-13: 978-0395709344
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,272,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Non-fiction?, March 4, 2008

By 

Sandra F. Burgos "Fiorella Lombardi" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gringa Latina: A Woman of Two Worlds (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

I liked Armando's comment about the huge historical mistakes made by someone who attended the Santa Ana private school. I guess he is right considering we used to have history class every year since the 6th. grade. I suppose Cristo Rey (the Jesuit school he talks about) always had a better curricula for their students!
Back to the book, I guess it is very tough to write about our memories from Tacna or even Peru in general, when this country seems to take away part of our objectivity in just a matter of months. We tend to remember good things as being "great" and bad things as "really bad" perhaps. Tacna is certainly a small city but I have never thought of it as a "village". Perhaps we still don't have a Mc Donald's or a BK there, but that doesn't mean anything really. Although "drugs and fear" have always been present, I highly doubt that they would have made such a great difference during the years the author lived there. Yes, perhaps we continue to fill the news every day with stories about murder, corruption and rape, but that's just what we care to show to the world. I lived in Tacna until 1999, part of one of these Italian families who migrated over there and enjoyed the privileges of having money and building a reputation that now is almost vanished. I won't deny that I tell stories about Tacna all the time, in some cases; these stories are even phrased similarly as to the ones in the book. They excite people. Still, I believe it is mostly because our lack of open minds and the way we managed to carry traditions from one generation to the other. This is the greatest mystery of all I think; we can only see it as such and relate it in such a magical way after going through the major change of leaving that city.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Being from neither here nor there, August 10, 2000

By 

"berenjena" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gringa Latina: A Woman of Two Worlds (Hardcover)

In Gringa Latina we have a character that his not Peruvian or Hispanic because her family comes from Italy, when she leaves Peru and comes to the states she is a latina because she in not American, and so it goes that she is never fully at home in either culture or though we get a brilliant portrayal of her youth in the South American continent. Excellent book.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A beautifully told story..., August 2, 2000

By 

Sonya "ParaNormal & Romance Reviewer" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gringa Latina: A Woman of Two Worlds (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this book. She did such a wonderful job describing Peru and the complexity of her feelings being a "Latina" based on geographic reasons, and "Gringa" according to her ethnicity. I also found it interesting how she was perceived when in America. Reading this book also made me want to see Peru and all it's beauty.