Reviews

My Broken Language: A Memoir by Quiara Alegría Hudes

jgverrero's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This was such a fascinating memoir. We're all familiar with the Nuyorican sub culture, but what Hudes was able to bring into the conversation was her intimate relationship with Taíno descendants and the religion of Santeria. Alongside a unique coming of age story, Quiara laced with beautiful metaphors, thought provoking language and syntax, touching on societal issues and societal short-comings, this book is sure to have something for readers of all types. 

I have so personal favorites but I absolutely loved when she spoke about the Perez's women and their bodies.

Required reading!

reading_rebellion's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

5.0

9/22/24
WOW! Incredible. Moving. rhythmic and powerful! I have to process it all and come back to do a full review. 

shksprsis's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

5.0

itzsabino's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

thedogmother's review against another edition

Powerful and lyrical, Hudes memoir is a beautiful song celebrating her family and culture. Ultimately, the writing was too literary and arty for me. Again, I find myself totally unable to get immersed in these heavily poetic texts that used to be my jam back in my English major days. The content was both interesting and important. I really enjoyed learning about her mother's spirituality, but the delivery of that great content just didn't capture me.

There's super relatable passage that I want to keep here: "Instead, did something at my core disappoint mom? Some ingrained selfhood guaranteeing her displeasure would stick forever? And I finally let loose the thought I hated thinking, tired and obvious as it was, and unresolved as it would remain. Was I not Puerto Rican enough? The next thought was new. Was mom not Puerto Rican enough? Had years in Philly resulted in her own selfhood slipping away, rendering my halfness an abrasion in her migrant wound?"

bethantg's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

3.25

monalyisha's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I was so enamored with this (audio)book that I put off reviewing it, convinced I’d never be able to do it justice. You know what never helps me write a better review? WAITING. 🙈 

Seven months into the year, My Broken Language is tied (with Turtle Diary) for my favorite book thus far. It’s got everything I love: writing about writing, a complicated spirituality, the sacred mixed with the profane, a mother-daughter relationship, humor, earnestness, and utterly gorgeous prose. 

I suppose it was a little long but honestly, I could have listened forever. It’s possible I should be taking off the merest quarter of a star; I would prefer not to.

bookweaver's review against another edition

reflective medium-paced

5.0

stanro's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

4.0

This starts as a simple tale of a growing child, whose Peurto Rican mother and Jewish father move from Philadelphia to a farm, and then back (without the father) when the marriage ends. Philadelphia is not a place that has appeared much in my reading, and I’m liking being there in this way. 

The book is drifting by me pleasantly enough, though as a mainly “serious” reader I’m wondering how this so rapidly scaled  the heights of my TBR, when I’m arrested by a tale of … I don’t want to spoil it … but it shocks and appals me and concerns the author’s Peurto Rican grandmother. This, together with the closely preceding references to the mother’s union and community building activity, means I’m getting hooked 😀. 

Quiara’s mother goes through a spiritual transformation - really a return to roots. And Quiaria faces the question, to approach or retreat from her mother’s spiritual activities. 

Quiaría also questions who she is, using facility in language, or lack of it, as a marker. At one point she places herself thus: “English, halting Spanish and advanced conversational Du Champs …”

This is the story in first person of the writer of the musical The Heights, performed in many countries, and how she was made into the person who could write it. 

Despite her excited description of meeting Paula Vogel, a playwright enthusiastically and successfully running an academic postgraduate course at a significant US University, I found I lost interest in its following stages for a while. 

But late in the book there is a joyous song to the variety of her female relatives’ naked bodies and then some critique of mainstream female idealisation. And through it all is the recurring losses amongst family that she so sadly experiences. Worth the ride!  4⭐️  #areadersjourney 

librabby's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

4.5