Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kim_j_dare 's review for:
In the Country We Love: My Family Divided
by Diane Guerrero
Guerrero narrates the audio version of her memoir, and I might have enjoyed it more if I’d read the print version. She tells an important story, and one that will resonate with way too many teens and adults who have experienced similar circumstances. While she was growing up, her mother was deported twice, and managed to return to the US both times. When Guerrero was 14, she returned home from school to find that both of her parents had been arrested, and over the coming months they were ultimately deported to Colombia. The following years were a time of staying with family friends, scrambling to get accepted to college, and trying to cope with serious debt and serious mental health issues by drinking her problems away.
The decision to pursue acting seems to have been the turning point she needed to start getting things back on track. She had her ups and downs along the way, but finally got her big break with Orange.
The issues I had were with the tone of portions of her story. She can come across as bratty and self-absorbed— not just when she’s relaying things that happened in her teens and early twenties, where that might be age-appropriate, but in the way she recounts more recent events. Her attempts at humor were often more flippant. And the glossing over of her cutting and heavy drinking were disturbing.
I appreciate her honesty about the toll the separation had on her relationship with her parents, especially her mother; and I appreciate the fact that she has become involved in immigration reform efforts. I do think her experiences will resonate with older teens and twenty-somethings.
The decision to pursue acting seems to have been the turning point she needed to start getting things back on track. She had her ups and downs along the way, but finally got her big break with Orange.
The issues I had were with the tone of portions of her story. She can come across as bratty and self-absorbed— not just when she’s relaying things that happened in her teens and early twenties, where that might be age-appropriate, but in the way she recounts more recent events. Her attempts at humor were often more flippant. And the glossing over of her cutting and heavy drinking were disturbing.
I appreciate her honesty about the toll the separation had on her relationship with her parents, especially her mother; and I appreciate the fact that she has become involved in immigration reform efforts. I do think her experiences will resonate with older teens and twenty-somethings.