[A] stunning... deeply moving memoir about how understanding our histories—both present and past—allows for recovery and healing rooted in the politics of liberation."
―BookPage (starred review)
"First in the Family does the mammoth work of bending backward and forward, weaving a multivalent story that asks us to consider the actual, and often awesome, debris of necessary fracture. A beautiful piece of art."
―Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
"A gripping narrative of generational addiction... This is an essential read, offering profound insights into the complexities of addiction in families and the often-obscured and difficult path to recovery." ―Booklist
"Hoppe debuts with a bold and illuminating account of getting sober and her attempts to ‘decolonize recovery’ by deconstructing ingrained narratives about people of color and substance abuse... She presents her findings in sharp, forceful prose, effortlessly weaving together her personal story and her insights into the intersection between race and sobriety. This is essential reading."
―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An illuminating and intense reading experience." —Kirkus
“First in the Family is a riveting memoir, but also a tender guide to overcoming — addiction, trauma, colonialism. It takes a writer with great emotional intelligence and generosity to trace the harrowing moments of her life back to the invisible systems and structures that damage every one of us. Jessica Hoppe has done that more.” —Alejandro Varela, author of The Town of Babylon
"Jessica Hoppe writes with grace and gripping candor about being the first in her family to recover from addiction in this fiery debut memoir." —Esquire
"Jessica Hoppe’s First in the Family crackles like a bonfire: fierce and wise, bearing light and warmth. I read it in a single sitting, breathless and grateful, spellbound by a voice vibrating with insight, compassion, and candor, and a reckoning unafraid to wrestle fully with the important truths and histories at stake. Like so many American traditions, recovery in the U.S. has been dominated by whiteness that claims what it did not discover and refuses to listen to what it doesn’t want to hear, but Hoppe’s stunning book invites us into the next, necessary chapter of our collective recovery from our deluded dreams, challenging us to remember James Baldwin’s call: 'Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise.' Hoppe does not assume otherwise. Instead, she tells her story and follows it outward into a stunning illumination of American life." –Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams
“A powerful thunderclap of a memoir, Jessica Hoppe’s First in the Family is a rich excavation of one woman’s descent into addiction and the power found in laying it all bare. Hoppe’s uncompromising voice doesn’t hide behind platitudes but gently unravels damaging legacies tied to the “American Dream” with a much-needed critique of the recovery movement. A triumphant example of hope where breaking harmful cycles is not found in the individual achievement but in a collective one.” –Lilliam Rivera, award-winning author of Dealing in Dreams
“First in the Family is truth-telling at its finest. At once raw and brilliant, Jessica Hoppe's debut memoir breaks not only family cycles, but the cycle of the American Dream: a patriarchal, white, racist, misogynist nightmare that doesn’t stand a chance in the face of Hoppe's cutthroat pen. Everyone can learn from this level of honesty. We are fortunate to live at the same time as a writer like Jessica.” –Javier Zamora, New York Times bestselling author of Solito
"First in the Family sings with love and shouts with rage, offering an uplifting account of resilience and recovery even while calling out the seductive dangers of the American Dream. Jessica Hoppe has crafted an important, pathbreaking contribution by distilling the historical stakes of the addiction crisis, while simultaneously presenting a wrenching and unique personal narrative. It's an insightful chronicle of the burdens of specialness, the weight of intergenerational trauma, and the stigma of addiction. In the end, it's an inspiring and essential message that there are numerous and diverse pathways of recovery.” –Carl Erik Fisher, M.D., author of The Urge
“First in the Family is the book I’ve been waiting for: A powerful reckoning combined with an inspiring sense of freedom. Perfect for anyone questioning their relationship with alcohol, and looking for an honest account of what it takes to navigate sobriety as a woman of color.” –Lupita Aquino, LupitaReads
2024-06-08
A Honduran Ecuadorian journalist and mental health advocate explores substance abuse in her family and its relationship to immigrant and racial trauma.
Born in San Antonio in 1982, Hoppe was the first-generation American child her parents believed would have everything they did not. Coming into the marriage, her parents achieved their own personal firsts like mothering without abandonment and fathering without violence. What they didn’t realize was that the American dream they chased across the country would demand “the sacrifice of our physical and mental health.” It would also cause the author to fall victim to the alcoholism that destroyed her maternal grandfather. College, the great American gateway to a shining future, brought with it stresses for Hoppe, as well, including a heavy work and class schedule and expectations of moving directly into a well-paying job. It also became the place where, overwhelmed by responsibility, she learned to see alcohol as the cure-all “solution” to hardship and the systemic injustices she faced as a brown-skinned woman. As her drinking worsened, Hoppe began forgetting incidents involving extreme, often dangerous levels of intoxication. She eventually found her way to therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous, only to discover that AA had no room for stories that involved the social inequities Hoppe knew had fueled her alcoholism. “Race-related trauma was labeledterminal uniqueness,” she writes, “and dismissed as a false projection of my self-centered ego.” As the author fought her way back to sobriety, she uncovered healing truths about relatives who had suffered from addiction and about the real yet unacknowledged founders of the modern recovery movement, Native Americans. As this raw, at times unsparing memoir probes the meaning of the American dream for immigrants, it also reveals the sickness inherent in all white supremacist projects, including those meant to heal.
An illuminating and intense reading experience.
