Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir
Told with a lyrical, almost-dreamlike voice as intoxicating as the moonflowers and orchids that inhabit this world, Monsoon Mansion is a harrowing yet triumphant coming-of-age memoir exploring the dark, troubled waters of a family's rise and fall from grace in the Philippines. It would take a young warrior to survive it.
Cinelle Barnes was barely three years old when her family moved into Mansion Royale, a stately ten-bedroom home in the Philippines. Filled with her mother's opulent social aspirations and the gloriously excessive evidence of her father's self-made success, it was a girl's storybook playland. But when a monsoon hits, her father leaves, and her mother's terrible lover takes the reins, Cinelle's fantastical childhood turns toward tyranny she could never have imagined. Formerly a home worthy of magazines and lavish parties, Mansion Royale becomes a dangerous shell of the splendid palace it had once been.
In this remarkable ode to survival, Cinelle creates something magical out of her truth--underscored by her complicated relationship with her mother. Through a tangle of tragedy and betrayal emerges a revelatory journey of perseverance and strength, of grit and beauty, and of coming to terms with the price of family--and what it takes to grow up.
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"We implore you to get your hands on this harrowing and triumphant coming-of-age story set in the Philippines." --Hyphen Magazine
"Through the course of Barnes's work, we come to find that the body does have mechanisms for survival and that sometimes the twinning of resolve and perseverance can lead to small moments of grace." --The Margins
"Tender and lyrical, Cinelle Barnes's memoir follows her family's rise and fall in the Philippines." --The Margins
"Stuck in a tangled web of betrayal, Barnes's harrowing coming-of-age memoir reveals the strength we don't know we have until we are forced to use it." --SheReads
"Cinelle Barnes's debut memoir is filled with the joy and pain of childhood. Set strikingly against the backdrop of Mansion Royale and the rich Philippine landscape, Barnes weaves the complex story of her family and the shifting dynamics that rocked her childhood. This memoir--a fairy tale turned survival story--strikes at the heart of what it means to grow up and face the reality of family." --Culture Trip
"In this gut-wrenching rags-to-riches story, author Cinelle Barnes recounts growing up in the shadow of her family's fall from grace in the Philippines, and what exactly it took to survive...Beautiful prose [and] evocative detail...make the pages of Monsoon Mansion fly." --Bustle
"Barnes hopes that Monsoon Mansion will provide some comfort to other survivors of childhood trauma. But she also hopes that the book builds empathy in people who don't have experience with abuse, poverty, or war." --Bustle
"If you enjoy memoirs that take you to a life, location, and world entirely different from your own, bump Monsoon Mansion to the top of your TBR list." --Hello Giggles
"Reminiscent of both Jeanette Walls's memoir, The Glass Castle (2005), and Sandra Cisneros's seminal novel The House on Mango Street (1984), this is a story of a tragic childhood told in a remarkably uplifting voice. Barnes imbues scenes from her interrupted childhood with an artistic touch that reads like literary fiction. Luminescent and shattering, Barnes's first book is a triumph: a conquering of the past through the power of the written word." --Booklist (starred review)
"A young essayist's memoir of her extraordinary riches-to-rags childhood in the Philippines...In this tender and eloquent tale, the author plumbs the depths of family dysfunction while telling a harrowing story of survival graced by moments of unexpected magic. A lyrically heartfelt memoir of resilience in the face of significant obstacles." --Kirkus Reviews
"Barnes's aptly titled debut memoir, Monsoon Mansion, is saturated in pain, trauma, and, at times, pure joy. This is Barnes's childhood in the Philippines--one she describes as both mesmerizing and horrifying." --Charleston City Paper
"In this incandescent debut memoir, Cinelle Barnes forges memories of her family's downfall with tumultuous Filipino history. Like the storm in its title, Monsoon Mansion immerses us in the darkest waters of memory, stirring up unbearably brutal childhood events with lyrical prose and searing imagery, forming a woven tale that is both delicate and electric. This book assures us that even when we lose those things that give shape to our humanity--our roots, culture, and family--we can go on to devise a new way of being." --Susan Tekulve, author of In the Garden of Stone
"The princess becomes a pauper before she turns eleven, yet through grit and love and words, that princess, Cinelle Barnes, escapes a fallen-in mansion and broken family to survive. Light fills this beautiful memoir--breaking through the dark loneliness of a mansion with no electricity. And light will fill you and carry you on, dear reader, even after you turn the last page. Monsoon Mansion sings a song of rain and sparkling light, and like its author, we'll all come to know the diamonds we carry in our palms." --Jim Minick, author of Fire Is Your Water
"Monsoon Mansion is a classic memoir that will reach every part of the world today with its personal story of love, heartbreak, betrayal, belief, and survival. An unforgettable tale of our time." --Dan Wakefield, author of Going All the Way and New York in the Fifties
"Writing about young warrior girls is my forte, so believe me when I tell you that Cinelle's strength, the one that carried her through years of darkness to then relive them in the forging of these pages, is dazzling. Blindingly so. Her prose sears. Her story illuminates. Every memory in Monsoon Mansion burns, but there's healing in the flames, somehow, because Cinelle stands on the other side of the inferno--shining." --Ryan Graudin, author of Wolf By Wolf
