Wow. I just loved this memoir. I hardly have the words to justify a review.
The author gives us her story - her childhood, her family, her feelings of insecurity being bilingual and mixed race, her journey through music and writing that took her from North Philly to Yale and beyond.
How she found her voice and brought her family and heritage to the page, to be written down and shared and loved.
How she grew up surrounded by love and food, but also by AIDS and drugs. Wondering why her neighborhood was so disproportionately affected and becoming the leader of the AIDS awareness group at her high school. so much about the sickness that no one would name and how it affected her neighborhood and family.
How her search for understanding God led her to Quaker meetings and brought her right back to her own home where her mother was a santera of Lukumí. Learning about Lukumí (also known as Santería) and about Quiara's Taino heritage was fascinating. A very brief history section in one chapter made me ashamed at how little I know of the history of Puerto Rico.

And the writing! She is a Pulitzer- winning playwright and this memoir shows that she is excellent at writing anything. The love of her family is brought to the page so strongly I cried. Here's a favorite quote (among many): "Mom, if you ever read this book (and make it this far without disowning me), I ask you one favor: break this English language today and tomorrow and the day after and bestow it new life with each breaking. Endow your fullness upon this cracked colonial tongue. You language genius. This is your English. You earned it. I am only a guest here."

I wanted to like <i>My Broken Language</i>, but struggled with it. Upon picking it up, I was immediately captivated by Quiara Alegria Hudes's story: urban Puerto Rican Philadelphian uprooted to rural Pennsylvania to live on a farm. Quiara's mother is a healer, a bit psychic, performs animal sacrifices. This all sounds so interesting! The kind of life story that I can't wait to read about. Unfortunately, the execution fell flat for me. I struggled with the non-linear storytelling, never quite understanding what was happening, how it connected, or where it was going. I can see why others would love and enjoy <i>My Broken Language</i> but it didn't work for me. Thank you to the author & publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Lyrical like the work Hudes’ is known for, My Broken Language is a beautiful memoir that details the influence of family and place on the work of this artist. There are some really lovely magical realism touches in this telling, and the way in which it highlights language (Spanish with her mom, English with her Dad, some mix elsewhere in her life) and belonging were really inspiring.

I wish there was a better word to describe this book than "lyrical" because that seems almost trite given Hudes's career trajectory. But lyrical it remains, with gusto.

My Broken Language is smart, witty, winsome, painful, heartbreaking, and awe-inspiring. It's an exploration of home, youth, music, family, culture, belonging, spirituality, and - of course - language. It isn't an easy read but it is a worthwhile one. Highly recommended.

This nonfiction memoir tells the story of how the author, now a 40-year-old playwright and growing up in a rich stew of cultural influences, learned to find her own language and identity. Her mother’s side, the Perez family, was Puerto Rican; they lived almost in an enclave in a suburb of Philadelphia.

Her father was white, and after he remarried, although he lived only an hour away, his middle class suburban white world seemed like another universe to Quiara, far away from the raucous world of her extended family in Philly.

Dad and his new wife Sharon lectured Quiara about “inner-city problems,” seemingly wanting her to make a choice to identify with what they considered to be a superior expression of her whiter color. They had plenty of judgment about her other world, but no real clue what it meant to live with little money, inferior health care, prejudice, underfunded schools, and the constant negative expectations of others. She thought to herself: “Who were dad and Sharon anyway? King and queen of Shit-Don’t Stink Land?” Emotionally, she preferred the Perezes, even though life was hard, and even though, intellectually, she wanted to explore the languages of the white world.

For a while, she inhabited the spaces in between.

At first Quiara thought she found a way to express herself and the pain, confusion, but also joy she felt, through music, which she studied at Yale. But what she found was alienating. She wrote: “Many dictionaries live in this world, and at Yale, ‘music’ came from a different Webster, with a different definition. The word meant a particular type - Western classical - without even having to specify. ‘Music’ was a synonym for ‘white.’”

She knew she didn’t want to be part of a world that blindfolded itself to her other culture, and that “didn’t other entire hemispheres of art.”

Then she turned to literature in a creative writing workshop at Brown University, and especially books by others occupying borderlands: Ralph Ellison, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison. She learned that she didn’t have to be “loyal” to English. Language that aims toward perfection, her instructor told her, is a lie, reminding her that Shakespeare knew this, and broke English until its dictionaries grew by a thousand entries.

She began to write plays that combined her facility with language with the stories of the matriarchal world of the Perez women: “My pantheon, my Perez women, my biblical ribs and mud. Out of their rough, mortal flesh was fashioned my tempo and taste.”

She wanted to share their history, and incorporate *their* language - “Spanglish’s ever-shifting syntax and double-rich sonority” into the mainstream.

As of this writing, she has experienced a great deal of success. Her play “Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue,” was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play "Water by the Spoonful."

Evaluation: So many children now grow up on the borders, between two cultures, and they struggle with which world will claim their identities. This revealing memoir will help readers understand the conflicts that often threaten to tear apart the children of diverse unions.

"My Broken Language" by Quiara Alegria Hudes is a memoir about her home and family and how she makes sense of it all. Wow. This book is so beautiful that I found myself re-reading passages and savoring each page. This book is definitely in a league of its own, but I found a lot of parallels between this book and the themes and language that characterize Richard Blanco's work. I loved reading about Hudes' family and how she channels everything that surrounds her in her life - love, music, art, books, spirituality, and language - into her own work. I really hope everyone enjoys this book as much as I did.