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abbydee's review
I always wanted a little more from this book. Pike frequently hits nails on heads, articulating uncomfortable truths in the simplest possible way, but I’m still hungry for something more than a rewrite of her Peace Corps journals. A little broader consciousness, some fruit of the thirty years since her trip to Bolivia and the opportunity to contextualize that experience with hindsight. But she seems more interested in re-creating her own naivete and wrong-footedness. These are banal emotions for travelers, because everyone comes from a culture and feels a little awkward and exhausted outside of it. Though I must say Pike does an impressively, spectacularly bad job navigating the Bolivian small-town small town. Or maybe a good job having a memorable experience in a place she knew she could leave without consequences. Pike acknowledges her own confusion, sometimes poorly navigated, and the strange, double-edged virtues of the Peace Corps tour of duty. She is frank about what she wanted from this experience and the way her expectations changed while she was in South America. But the lens still feels very zoomed on a dramatic, isolated dalliance in her life, and I wonder what broadening that perspective might lend to the telling.
lesbrary's review against another edition
I discuss this on April 6th's All the Books episode! Here are two quotations that stuck out to me:
"My identity was a tailless donkey they had to pin the right kind of brown."
"I was ashamed of everything that I did and said. I wished I had stayed in my room tonight and every night so as not to embarrass myself. I hated feeling that way. Yet I also loved the world and people. I didn’t know how to be in the world and not feel ashamed."
"My identity was a tailless donkey they had to pin the right kind of brown."
"I was ashamed of everything that I did and said. I wished I had stayed in my room tonight and every night so as not to embarrass myself. I hated feeling that way. Yet I also loved the world and people. I didn’t know how to be in the world and not feel ashamed."
k8linthegr8's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
isalime's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
I’ve never read a travel memoir before and it’s not a genre I actively seek out. I was worried it would be boring and I was wrong. I was engaged the whole time and reflective wit Ursula as she described her time in Bolivia
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Infidelity
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, and Pregnancy
miss_vonnegut's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I used to love travel memoirs but have become uncomfortable with the fact that the majority of them are written by white folks, often traveling to predominantly non-white areas. So I was really excited when this came into the used bookstore where I work! It was wonderful to read a travel memoir by an indigenous woman. You get the things I enjoy about travel memoirs (learning about other countries and cultures, adventure, etc) with the addition of more critical thinking about the role of travel and colonization. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys travel memoirs.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity
Moderate: Drug use
Minor: Rape