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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gringa, November 9, 2009
This review is from: Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood (Paperback)
In Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood, Melissa Hart finds her 1970s life in a Los Angeles suburb disrupted when her mother takes her three children and leaves the family's gated community to live in Oxnard, 60 miles away, with her Hispanic lesbian lover. For Melissa, her new life in the poor Latino neighborhood where they settle seems joyous and free. But it is interrupted again when her father appears with a court order for Melissa's custody saying, "You can't grow up parented by two women. It's unnatural."
And so the contradictions and conflicts begin. Melissa's longing to live with her counter-culture mother, rather than with her "normal" father and her stepmother, is maintained as a long thread throughout this memoir of a young girl's rebellion. She is conscious enough to appreciate her stepmother's efforts to be a good mother, but also knows that her father cannot understand her. She portrays her mother as a delightful, independent woman, but one who sometimes wonders how she produced her driven daughter. It takes fine writing and courage to give oneself the contrary, often unsympathetic, image seen in these pages--a young woman struggling to find her own path within very different and contradictory cultural and family expectations.
The secondary theme of Gringa is Melissa's deep desire to join the warm, Chicano community to which her mother seems to belong--a desire that is frustrated by her own middle-class Anglo background. She can't speak fluent Spanish and she has trouble making Hispanic friends. Her first serious boyfriend drinks, does drugs, and is uneducated. His Mexican family disapproves of her because she will not stay in the kitchen with the other women. She begins to see that it's difficult to fit the model of a woman in a large, loving, loud Hispanic family if she doesn't also fit the family's model of a domestic woman. Her insistence on being her individual self alienates her.
This coming-of-age memoir will appeal to women who have had the audacity to be a rebellious teen while at the same time longing for a stable, understanding family. Gringa is well written with hilarious, but real, recipes relating to each chapter. Recommended for young women in high school, as well as older readers.
by Judith Helburn
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my favorite books, April 19, 2010
This review is from: Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood (Paperback)
Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood
Coming of age is probably the most difficult, angst ridden time of our little lives (not to mention how fashion ridiculous we were) but for Melissa Hart, her girlhood went from ideal, to all of the above, including her parents divorce thrown into the mix but a divorce made all the more difficult by her mother leaving her father for another woman. In the 1970's, where a gay parent was even more taboo, Melissa and her siblings could only see their mother on weekends, courtesy of her father who thundered, "You can't be parented by two women. It's unnatural."
To make things even more interesting, the physical topography go from Manhattan Beach with her overbearing father, to Oxnard, California where her bohemian mother has establishes herself in a Latino neighborhood. Miss Hart's world of perfection and propriety with her loving but subservient step mother and tyrant of a father, chafes at every turn, for with her mother, she is encouraged to be herself and she learns to embrace the easy and genial Latino community. In turn this sparks her need to belong to a "culture" and the results are funny, heartrending and will strike an all too familiar chord in all of us.
No matter what era we came of age, no matter the circumstances, we all want to be accepted and belong, somewhere, somehow. With Miss Hart, the usual phases were complicated by not knowing which world she belonged. Moreover, if we doubted our sexuality, Melissa's doubt were exacerbated by wondering if she should be like her mom. Again the results of exploring those avenues are poignant, sometimes hilarious and always leaving her wondering if she will ever belong.
The best part of this book is traveling with Miss Hart and the cast of characters that populate her world. She evokes images so real that you can feel the tension and smell the clean in her father's house. You can drift away on the Latino music and smell the food cooking in the backyard of her mother's neighborhood. You can relate to and really squirm on many levels as Miss Hart describes the fashion of the day and when the music of the 70's and 80's become part of the backdrop of a story she relates, you WILL remember and the songs just may get stuck in your head!
What I enjoyed the most about this book, was the emotions conveyed without varnish, the humor readily available even in bad times and most of all, something unique to this book: recipes. Through all the turmoil and telling of her story, Miss Hart ends each chapter with a recipe. Not just any recipe but one that has meaning and relevance to it's preceding chapter. Recipes like Frito Boats, Annie's Special Chili and WASP milkshakes, all with appropriate ingredients and a few unexpected ones as well and all with a huge dose of emotion. They are well worth trying and you will remember the reason why and how they came into being every time you make them.
Someone said this is a story written from the new America. Indeed, but living through teenage years, overcoming whatever we had thrown at us and making our way in the world is as old as time itself. Miss Hart's journey is one not to miss.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
absolutely loved this one!!, November 17, 2009
This review is from: Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood (Paperback)
I love this book! Buy it; read it, I'm sure you will love it too. If I haven't convinced you yet, keep reading...
First they were a normal family in the 1970's, living happily in Southern California. And then they become fractured and multiplied and Melissa Hart has to flip flop herself between her father's lavish lifestyle with his new wife, her stepmother, and her mother's bohemian lifestyle in a Hispanic neighborhood. These influences shape her as she grows, but during that shaping and molding there is a push and pull within her to learn and determine where she fits in the world. And isn't that always largely based on how you were raised and your cultural influences.
During her parents divorce a judge determines that her lesbian mother and her lover are not good influences on Melissa and her siblings and therefore Melissa, to her chagrin, ends up living with her father and wishing desperately she was with her mother, who she can closer relate to throughout the years.
Melissa's frank language, honest re-telling, and innate comical mind make this book so much more than the above two paragraphs can parlay. I picked this book up and did not put it down. I devoured it in one sitting, staying up into the wee morning hours doing so. I cheered Melissa on, and frowned at the judge's determination and remembered fondly things from my own childhood. Melissa's penchant for recall of time and place and her ability to put you there made this book a trip to a different time and place. This memoir reads like fiction, not because the authenticity is not there, but rather because Melissa's retelling is not a factual list you must read but rather a story you become a part of.
This book was enchanting, engrossing and more so happily entertaining. There are lessons to be garnered here as Melissa finds her way, but the real joy in this story is the value of family, the realization that we all belong...somewhere. In this memoir there exists a strong confident female voice. This would be an especially fantastic gift to give a college aged girl to read as she navigates through her newly found freedom and realizes she has many choices in life.
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