A Body Across Two Hemispheres
A Memoir in Essays
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"A Body Across Two Hemispheres is a timely book, one many of us need and will be grateful to have read." —Shara McCallum
"A Body Across Two Hemispheres is the kind of memoir that makes us more human; the kind written with tenderness about ordinary people with ordinary and exceptional, bitter and beautiful, small and big lives. Like ours." —Adriana PÁramo
"Always honest and surprising, Buitron's book showcases multiple essay forms to tell a powerful, timeless story. A wonderful debut." —Dinty W. Moore
In this electrifying debut, Victoria Buitron comes of age between Ecuador and the United States as she explores her ancestry, learns two languages, and searches for a place she can call home. It portrays not only the immigrant experience, but the often-overlooked repatriate experience while interweaving facets of depression, family history, and self-love. With the utmost honesty, A Body Across Two Hemispheres encompasses the deep and complex layers of teenage life into adulthood—and the sacrifices made along the way for Victoria to become who she was meant to be all along.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Translator Buitron chronicles her years living in the United States and Ecuador in her beguiling if shaky debut, an essay collection that charts her struggle to feel like she belonged, and raises perceptive questions around home and identity along the way. Born in Milagro in 1989, Buitron moved as a child to Norwalk, Conn., where her family spent the next decade before being summoned back to Ecuador to care for her ailing grandfather. Moving fluidly between the past and present, she writes of returning to the U.S. at age 22 and gaining 10 pounds ("My stomach is indeed an insipid gringa," she concedes), while an essay titled "(Un)Documented" charts her husband's frustrating experiences navigating DACA. Meanwhile, "The Garbage Collector's Daughter" recounts the treasures she found in the trash procured from her father's routes through Connecticut's wealthiest towns. While her vulnerability and verve are enticing, Buitron's writing has a tendency to get in the way of itself—as when she devotes an entire essay to her eye problems or turns to florid descriptions to describe the mundane ("The process of protein, follicle, and root thrives on the landscape of my epidermis," she writes of her body hair). Despite its rough patches, it makes for a layered look at a life stretched across cultures.
