Reaction: Becoming Maria by Sonia Manzano

Book Cover for Sonia Manzano's memoir

I remember being a little girl and watching Sesame Street with my eyes glued to the television while my mouth sung out loud in the living room, ABC's, 123's.  My grandma would walk in and sit with my grandpa and smile when Maria would come on.  She'd say, "Mira esta muchacha Puerto Riqueña tan bonita."  My grandma thought Maria was a  beautiful Puerto Rican young lady.  "Como la Lola Beltran, verdad Salazar?"  Beautiful like Lola Beltran!

Maria's accent was like grandma's and tia Cecilia's and Mama Mary's and grammo Rita's. Our television was saturated in Spanish because grandma's favorite shows were on Telemundo and Univision.  Spanish was constantly flowing through our home.  When the television wasn't on, Paulino Bernal was ranting and raving over Spanish radio.  It was enough to drive all us cousins out of the house and into the yard while grandma was left inside to her limpiezas.

I couldn't wait to read, "Becoming Maria" because she was the first Latina that I saw on television. She was the first woman who spoke like all the other women in my family.  We were all on television through Maria. Although, as a child I did not know about Puerto Ricans.  I thought everyone who spoke Spanish was like us Mexicans.

From surviving an alcoholic and abusive father growing up in the South Bronx to being unafraid to stand up to ridiculousness to being aware of racism hidden in people's pockets to becoming the representation of a body of people on a stage in the public's eye.  This book held me until the last page.

Can you tell me how to get...how to get to Sesame Street?  Getting to a place of acknowledgement comes with a great price and the journey is difficult.  I absolutely recommend this book and love that it lives on my bookshelf for the rest of time.  I hope that she writes another.

I hope one day to meet this muchacha tan bonita como la Lola Beltran!

Reaction: The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

"I was a little girl and then I wasn't. I was a bacha posh and then I wasn't. I was a daughter and then I wasn't. I was a mother and then I wasn't."

There were moments in the course of reading this book that had me paralyzed.  This was more often a sobering read than it was a tragic one.  I followed Rahim(a) with an attentive eye, finding connections with her bacha posh life and mine as a young tomboy.  When she was changed back into a girl, it was with a heavy heart that I read the lines and understood that it was only because she and her sisters were to be married off in exchange for money to further fuel her father's opium addiction which soon became their mother's.  

I cannot imagine putting a price on the body of my young daughter - Ages 12, 13, and 14 Rahima and her sisters were married off into the life of a warlord family to bear children, to lose life, to lose the blindness of a sheltered life, to taste the richness of an open window at the seat of parliament.  Often, I would close the book and exhale loudly.   I would press my hands onto the pages wanting one of them to reach out and not have to endure the life of a young Afghan girl in war torn Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Following Shekiba through her early 20th century life, the great great grandmother of Rahim(a), I admired her skill, her endurance and her hope.  She often reminded me of my grandmother in her incessant will to survive and her faith in God.  Also, a bacha posh for a time, Shekiba knew the importance of her life in guarding the king's harem.  

Through a mighty tragic event she was spared a stoning, but the concubine she was to be protecting did not.  Hashimi describes in artful detail the stoning of this young woman and with each stone that belted the life out of her, I almost could not read on.  Stoning was (and is) true for so many woman that stood outside of the box of rules ordered of them.  Shekiba could be described as a mighty warrior woman who found her place, at last, among the backdrop of an impossible journey.  

Although, this was a work of fiction, it still brought me to my knees to read of these women.  I admired their hope and their courage.  I recommend this book.  Don't give up.