Something Fierce

Something Fierce

Published:
2011-12-13
Categories:
ISBN:
9781553657910
Meeting:
FBC Recommended R2.049
Pages:
288
File size (e-book):
496 KB
Download URL:
Book Availability:
available
Pre Order Availability:
no
Accessibility Features:
enabled

Description:

Six-year-old Carmen Aguirre fled to Canada with her family following General Augusto Pinochet's violent 1973 coup in Chile.  Five years later, when her mother and stepfather returned to South America as Chilean resistance members, Carmen and her sister went with them, quickly assuming double lives of their own.  At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.

Something Fierce takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictator-ruled Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet's Chile in the eventful decade between 1979 and 1989.  Dramatic, suspenseful and darkly comic, it is a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life and a passionate argument against forgetting.

Author Details:

Carmen was born in Santiago, Chile and arrived in Canada when she was a small child. Her family were political refugees fleeing the Pinochet dictatorship. She is an award-winning stage actor and playwright, whose work has been seen extensively in North and South America. She has written and co-written over twenty-five plays, including "Chile Con Carne", "The Refugee Hotel", "The Trigger", "Blue Box", "Broken Tailbone", and "Anywhere but Here",. Her first book, a memoir entitled "Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter", won the 2012 CBC Canada Reads contest and is a #1 national bestseller. It has received rave reviews in Canada and the United Kingdom, where it was named BBC Book of the Week. It was followed by its bestselling sequel, "Mexican Hooker #1 and My Other Roles Since the Revolution". Carmen attended the prestigious theatre training program Studio 58, in Vancouver, Canada.