Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood

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More About This Book

Overview

Torn between the high socioeconomic status of her father and the bohemian lifestyle of her mother, Melissa Hart tells a compelling story of contradiction in this coming-of-age memoir. Set in 1970s Southern California, Gringa is the story of a young girl conflicted by two extremes. On the one hand there’s life with her mother, who leaves her father to begin a lesbian relationship, taking Hart and her two siblings along. Hart tells of her mom’s new life in a Hispanic neighborhood of Oxnard, California, and how these new surroundings begin to positively shape Hart herself. At the opposite extreme is her father’s white-bread well-to-do security, which is predictable and stable and boring. Hart is made all the more fraught with frustration when a judge rules that being raised by two women is “unnatural” and grants her father primary custody.

Hart weaves a powerful story of fleeting moments with her mother, of her unfolding adoration of Oxnard’s Latino culture, and of the ways in which she’s molded by the polarity of her parents’ worldviews. Hart is faced with opposing ideals, caught between what she is “supposed” to want and what she actually desires. Gringa offers a touching, reflective look at one girl’s struggle with the dichotomies of class, culture, and sexuality.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Hart (Journalism/Univ. of Oregon; The Assault of Laughter, 2005) takes a second crack at recording her coming-of-age years in 1970s Southern California. While the author's first memoir focused on her relationship with her lesbian mother, this one deals with not only that issue but also with her conflicted feelings about being white. When her parent's marriage dissolved and her mother moved out of their upper-middle-class suburban home, taking the author and siblings with her to Oxnard, a farming community north of the city, Hart was drawn to the color, warmth and especially the food of the large Hispanic families nearby. Chapters end with tongue-in-cheek recipes for making such dishes as tortillas, frito boats, chimichangas and chili. Her father soon won primary custody of the children, and the end-of-chapter recipes change to such delicacies as "WASP Milkshake" and "White Girl Cookies." Hart viewed her cultural background as pallid, banal and insipid, and her awkward teenage attempts to make her way into more vibrant and tradition-laden cultures were often disconcerting and disappointing. As a misfit college freshman at UC-Santa Cruz, she hooked up with a Mexican-American janitor, believing that as his girlfriend she had finally achieved cultural legitimacy. For a time they lived together in a ramshackle trailer on his parents' ranch, but the disparities in their backgrounds and in their expectations and ambitions doomed the relationship, apparently ending her search for an identity in the Hispanic world. The concluding chapter recounts a disastrous post-college trip to Spain with her mother in which the two women were totally out of synch with each other. The book is filled withdetailed conversations and particulars of dress, mannerisms and facial expressions that give it the feeling of a novel. A quirky narrative of artfully reconstructed memories.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781580052948
  • Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 9/22/2009
  • Pages: 288
  • Sales rank: 1,150,813
  • Product dimensions: 5.40 (w) x 8.10 (h) x 0.80 (d)
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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 21, 2011

    Review from The Oregonian

    Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood
    by Melissa Hart

    Melissa Hart's Memoir from the Heart
    A review by Katie Schneider

    "What's best for the child."

    The phrase gets bandied about a lot in divorce proceedings. For a young Melissa Hart, it was a judge's justification for taking her away from her mother, a loving, vibrant woman who happened to be a lesbian.

    "I must consider what's best for the children," the judge said. "A woman living with another woman, on a dangerous street with volatile neighbors?"

    The contrast between her father's sterile suburban lifestyle and her mother's warmth is at the center of Hart's new memoir, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood.

    "There were no Latinos, Chicanos or Hispanics in our upper-class gated community. There were only people like us," Hart writes of her early childhood in the early 1970s in suburban Los Angeles. "My mother and I pretended allegiance to their Tupperware parties, to their Brownie troops, to their Sunday morning services at the Presbyterian Church."

    But Hart's mother, Margaret, wasn't like the other suburban housewives. She wanted an altogether different life. First came the Spanish lessons, then the flirtation with a school bus driver named Patricia and arguments with Hart's father. When Margaret drove away, she took the children with her.

    Instead of being horrified by Patricia's run-down ranch house, Hart was gripped by a strange excitement. "I went wild and barefoot, braided my hair like an Indian maiden, and planted a garden of sunflowers and corn next to a rickety chicken coop my mother stocked with Rhode Island Reds." It's where she began a lifelong infatuation with Latino food and culture, associating her mother's blue VW bus with freedom, tacos and the songs she heard driving around town.

    It wouldn't last. Her father was awarded custody, and Hart and her siblings went back to the suburbs, away from the smells of lard and the influence of lesbians. With her father often working, the house felt quiet and cold. Hart's new stepmother tried hard to make the children feel at home, but they all lived for the every-other-weekend with their mother.

    Hart, who teaches writing at the University of Oregon, has crafted a well-balanced tale that forgoes blame in favor of poignancy. She captures the child's core desire, simply to be with her beloved mother. She shows how the ramifications of the custody decision affected later relationships with friends and lovers and even her mother.

    Gringa doesn't read like a polemic. Nevertheless, the message is clear. "What's best for the child" in her case would've been to do exactly the opposite of what the judge decided.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted January 7, 2010

    I Also Recommend:

    Don't waste your time or money on this snore

    Not what I expected at all, she never seemed (contrary to what the discription claims) to take "confort in a latino community", she was always akward and uncofortable with anyone except a childhood baby sitter and one friend (Rosa) in High School (althought she is not comfortable around Rosas latin friends). Yes she gets a latin boyfriend but she is uncomfortable around his family. I joined this Barnes and Noble forum today just to let you know, not to waste your time or money on this book.

    0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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