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A review by loriluo
In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
4.0
Silvia Vasques-Lavado is known as "the first Peruvian woman to scale Mount Everest" - but as her memoir reveals, her life has been so much more.
"In the Shadow of the Mountain" is told across two alternating timelines, the first focusing on Vasquez-Lavado's attempt to scale Mount Everest with a group of female survivors. She covers not only the grueling and dangerous progression, and the life-threatening encounters they face on a daily (and even hourly) basis, but reveals each of the women's stories and the previous lives of abuse and trafficking they managed to escape in Indian and Nepal.
The second timeline covers Vasquez-Lavado's personal history, starting from when she was a child growing up Peru. Even from a young age, she experiences some truly terrible crimes, and is sexually abused by a close family friend and physically abused by her own father. Her few attempts to speak up are ignored or suppressed by her family - an infuriating, but all-too-common situation for girls to be in. When she gets older, she's able to escape to America, but once again finds herself in a dangerous environment working for an alcohol company, where she succumbs to alcoholism in attempt to fit in and work her way up the corporate ladder. Vasquez-Lavado also covers the difficult topics of discovering and accepting her own sexuality, made even murkier thanks to her childhood, and how grief and loss can both hinder and help the progress made.
This was such a fascinating and well-written read, and I applaud the vulnerability that Silvia Vasquez-Lavado displayed in sharing both her triumphs and her struggles with us.
"In the Shadow of the Mountain" is told across two alternating timelines, the first focusing on Vasquez-Lavado's attempt to scale Mount Everest with a group of female survivors. She covers not only the grueling and dangerous progression, and the life-threatening encounters they face on a daily (and even hourly) basis, but reveals each of the women's stories and the previous lives of abuse and trafficking they managed to escape in Indian and Nepal.
The second timeline covers Vasquez-Lavado's personal history, starting from when she was a child growing up Peru. Even from a young age, she experiences some truly terrible crimes, and is sexually abused by a close family friend and physically abused by her own father. Her few attempts to speak up are ignored or suppressed by her family - an infuriating, but all-too-common situation for girls to be in. When she gets older, she's able to escape to America, but once again finds herself in a dangerous environment working for an alcohol company, where she succumbs to alcoholism in attempt to fit in and work her way up the corporate ladder. Vasquez-Lavado also covers the difficult topics of discovering and accepting her own sexuality, made even murkier thanks to her childhood, and how grief and loss can both hinder and help the progress made.
This was such a fascinating and well-written read, and I applaud the vulnerability that Silvia Vasquez-Lavado displayed in sharing both her triumphs and her struggles with us.