Mother Island

A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Mar 19 2024 | Archive Date Apr 18 2024

Talking about this book? Use #MotherIsland #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

A searing memoir that explores the institutions that defined a Puerto Rican woman and what she unlearned to rediscover herself • "A lushly written, deeply felt investigation into the meanings of home, lineage and selfhood." —Melissa Febos, bestselling author of Body Work and Girlhood

Growing up in the Midwest, raised by a Puerto Rican mother who was abandoned by her family, Jamie Figueroa and her sisters were estranged from their culture, consumed by the whiteness that surrounded them. In Mother Island, Figueroa traces her search for identity as shaped by and against a mother who settled into the safety of assimilation. In lyrical, blistering prose, Figueroa recalls a childhood in Ohio in which she was relegated to the background of her mother’s string of failed marriages; her own marriage in her early twenties to a man twice her age; how her work as a licensed massage therapist helped her heal her body trauma; and how becoming a mother has reshaped her relationship to her family and herself. Only as an adult in New Mexico was Figueroa able to forge her own path, using writing to recast her origin story. In a journey that takes her to Puerto Rico and back, Figueroa looks to her ancestors to reimagine her relationship to the past and to her mother’s native island, reaching beyond her own mother into a greater experience of mothering and claiming herself. 
    Drawing from Puerto Rican folklore and mythology, a literary lineage of women writers of color, and narratives of identity, Figueroa presents a cultural coming-of-age story. Candid and raw, Mother Island gets to the heart of the question: Who do we become when we are no longer trying to be someone else?
A searing memoir that explores the institutions that defined a Puerto Rican woman and what she unlearned to rediscover herself • "A lushly written, deeply felt investigation into the meanings of...

Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780553387681
PRICE $28.00 (USD)
PAGES 272

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Shelf App (EPUB)
Send to Kindle (EPUB)
Download (EPUB)

Average rating from 7 members


Readers who liked this book also liked: