Cristina!: Confidencias de Una Rubia

by Cristina Saralegui

Overview

Known as the "Hispanic Oprah", Cristina Saralegui is the host of her own phenomenally successful talk show and the head of the huge multimedia empire bearing her name. Her very existence is a tremendous source of inspiration to millions of Latin women around the world, and as a Warner hardcover, "Cristina!" (3/98) is one of the first books to be published in English and Spanish by a Hispanic personality of her magnitude.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446674386
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	04/01/1998
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.72(d)
Language:	Spanish

Editorial Reviews

Saralegui, known as the "Hispanic Oprah," is the hostess of the top-rated TV talk show El Show de Cristina, seen throughout the United States on Univision and in Latin America by over 100 million people. She also publishes the magazine Cristina, la revista, read by thousands of fans. Born in Cuba, she emigrated to the United States in 1960. Here this dynamic television personality relates her life, career accomplishments, and anecdotes in the same lively fashion viewers will recognize from her show. With black-and-white photos; highly recommended for public libraries.--Ondina Arrondo

Library Journal

In this gutsy but simple-minded memoir, the 49-year-old host and executive producer of El Show de Cristina, copublisher of the magazine Cristina la Revista, and host of the daily radio program Cristina Opina offers her advice on marriage, child-rearing, racial and sexual discrimination, menopause, and the challenge of growing old. Saralegui's colloquial prose also recounts the legends of her proud Basque heritage and her immigrant forebears' affluent lifestyle in the Caribbean. The granddaughter of a millionaire Cuban publishing magnate, she was born in a wealthy suburb of Havana but emigrated to Miami with her family at the age of 12, shortly after Castro's revolution. She gives thumbnail sketches of Cuban character and culture in transition as she and her fellow expatriates made their new home in a tightly knit, middle- class barrio where many immigrants grew up, lived, and died without ever speaking (or needing to speak) a word of English. Saralegui later enrolled at the University of Miami to study communications and creative writing. There she learned the dubious craft of writing "for the dumb schoolgirl," a technique she has all too clearly mastered. Once finished with school, she landed a gig writing mostly fluff pieces for Cosmopolitan en Espa¤ola hugely successful Hearst spin-off of which she eventually became editorial director. In that leading role, she seemingly chose to clone her mentor, Helen Gurley Brown, and live the quintessential "Cosmo Girl's" unexamined life. Saralegui's comments on her career move to television and radio are as brisk and shallow as all the others. Her life reads like a series of pranks or a continuation of her show's shenanigans, peopled withlackluster acolytes and charlatansvampires and alien abductees alike. A half-witted tell-all in the talk-show mode. (Author tour)

Kirkus Reviews