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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?
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 19, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593821480
- File size: 300261 KB
- Duration: 10:25:32
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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May 31, 2024
Novelist Figueroa (Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer) contemplates her mother's childhood losses and her own tween years growing up in Ohio. Figueroa's memoir starts as she ends a marriage, embarks on a journey to become a massage therapist, and begins writing about and deconstructing childhood memories to claim a place in her family's history. As she explores the trauma that her mother experienced upon leaving Puerto Rico, she also considers Puerto Rico's relationship with the U.S. mainland. Addressing topics of race, colonization, and assimilation, she taps into Boricua mythology, sharing the explorative work of other women writers of color along the way. Figueroa's experiences as a mother guide her when she visits Puerto Rico to meet the relatives her mother left behind and charts a new course for herself. Listeners will be moved by the power and sincerity of the author's measured voice as she narrates her poetic memoir of self-discovery; Kelle Rae Oien plays a supporting role. VERDICT Figueroa crafts a compelling story about culture and heritage based on childhood memories and adult reflections on her mother's efforts to make the mainland of the United States her adopted home.--Sharon Sherman
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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