Anthropologies
A Family Memoir
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
A vivid archive of memories, Beth Alvarado’s Anthropologies layers scenes, portraits, dreams, and narratives in a dynamic cross-cultural mosaic. Bringing her lyrical tenor to bear on stories as diverse as harboring teen runaways, gunfights with federales, and improbable love, Alvarado unveils the ways in which seemingly separate moments coalesce to forge a communal truth. Woven from the threads of distinct family histories and ethnic identities, Anthropologies creates a heightened understanding of how individual experiences are part of a larger shared fabric of lives.
Like the opening of a series of doors, each turn of the page reveals some new reality and the memories that emerge from it. Open one door and you are transported to a modest Colorado town in 1966, appraising animal tracks edged into a crust of snow while listening to stories of Saipan. Open another and you are lounging in a lush Michoacán hacienda, or in another, the year is 1927 and you are standing on a porch in Tucson, watching La Llorona turn a corner.
With vivid imagery and a poetic sensibility, Anthropologies reenacts the process of remembering and so evokes a compelling narrative. Each snapshot provides a glimpse into the past, illuminating the ways in which memory and history are intertwined. Whether the experience is of her own drug use or that of a great-great-grandmother’s trek across the Great Plains with Brigham Young, Alvarado’s insight into the binding nature of memory illuminates a new way of understanding our place within families, generations, and cultures.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sparked by her mother's deterioration into old age, Alvarado (Not a Matter of Love) has written a three-part memoir about her family life that approaches prose poetry. It is searing at moments, especially when she discusses her life as a junkie, but the narrative then becomes dreamy, even vague. Despite the loose structure not even chronological order is respected vivid portraits of her parents, children, in-laws, and especially, her husband ring true and sharp. A section focusing on her leaving her white, suburban upbringing to marry her Mexican husband and move into the home of his immigrant parents is particularly striking. Coming from a university press, this book risks being overlooked. However, readers should seek it out for Alvarado's distinctive and compelling writing.