White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing
Jennifer de Leon
(Author)
Description
Sometime in her twenties, Jennifer De Leon asked herself, "What would you do if you just gave yourself permission?" While her parents had fled Guatemala over three decades earlier when the country was in the grips of genocide and civil war, she hadn't been back since she was a child. She gave herself permission to return--to relearn the Spanish that she had forgotten, unpack her family's history, and begin to make her own way. Alternately honest, funny, and visceral, this powerful collection follows De Leon as she comes of age as a Guatemalan-American woman and learns to navigate the space between two worlds. Never rich or white enough for her posh college, she finds herself equally adrift in her first weeks in her parents' home country. During the years to follow, she would return to Guatemala again and again, meet ex-guerrillera and genocide survivors, get married in the old cobblestoned capital of Antigua, and teach her newborn son about his roots.Product Details
Price
$19.95
Publisher
University of Massachusetts Press
Publish Date
March 26, 2021
Pages
232
Dimensions
5.5 X 8.4 X 0.7 inches | 0.66 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781625345677
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About the Author
JENNIFER DE LEON is author of Don't Ask Me Where I'm From and editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education. De Leon has published prose in over a dozen literary journals, including Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, and is a GrubStreet instructor and board member. She is assistant professor of creative writing at Framingham State University and makes her home in the Boston area.