A review by erinonthedaly
Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

5.0

I wish I could give this book more than 5 stars. I had this on my to-read list for years, but I read it at the point in my life I most needed to. I was rooting for Leah from the start, in awe of a survivor story that takes the time to explain her/their whole self, ancestry and all, and what happens after trauma, who we become in all our versions. I love to feel the heartbeat of an author so fully connected to themselves and their truth in the moment of writing. This book does that. And also, it made me feel so seen. It's rare to find a text that explores what it means to be mixed race, diasporic girl grappling with the legacy of colonization that lives in our skin. The complexity of intergenerational mixing and the role of nation-building (e.g. Portuguese policies encouraging white colonists "marrying" locals) in forming isolated cultural communities are not often named. And then to connect Burgher culture to other colonies - like the Maquistas from Hong Kong and Macau...I need more of this kind of examination of erasure, history, and decolonial movement building with the potential to connect us. So grateful to Leah for the emotional processing it took to produce this work, for sharing her political consciousness, and showing me what a memoir can be. I know I'll be coming back to this text.