This is a fantastic book. I enjoyed the structure of the book. It is so well written.
I enjoyed this book a lot. A great book.

An inspirational and courageous memoir by a talented playwright who felt alienated for much of her life. By telling her story via the generations of fierce females who preceded her within her family unit, Hudes opens herself up to discussing her vulnerabilities, triumphs and hardships, of which there were many, and the blessing of having such brave, fearless women surrounding her and always ready to guide her ship out of a storm whenever she may require it. But it wasn't all plain sailing. It never is. My Broken Language is a beautifully written, memorable and emotionally resonant autobiography that explores Hudes's formative years and exactly what they held for her and those around her. Thought-provoking and touching right from the beginning.

I have been thinking about how I feel about the book for the past few days after finishing it. I liked a lot about the recollections of Hudes, anecdotes of a life in often turbulent surroundings. But that's it to me, it's just anecdotes and I could not help thinking of the mother's medicine herb garden arranged in a circle, it feels like the author went around in a circle. So whilst I love some aspects of it, and those I loved a lot, I found myself pondering: what's the "why" for this book. Why is she telling me this? What does she want me to understand? And so far, I have no real answer for that.

I knew of Quiara and her work on the musical "In the Heights", which I got to see in 2009.
I thought this book would also go into that, but it stops a while before that.
Quiara is a very beautiful and lyrical writer, sometimes mysterious, sometimes a little too mysterious.
Her memoir is written sort of chronologically, but within a story from say her youth, has a whole other tangent in there, which made it hard to follow at times. I also thought this book would be more about her, but it was mostly about a Latina family in Philly. Her mom seems like a really amazing woman. For a long time Spanish wasn't allowed in the house and not given enough space, while I have a very minor understanding of Spanish, sometimes there were so many words that I couldn't really follow it very well. I would have loved a lil dictionary in the front or back of the book.
I got the sense she felt alienated for a long time, and in writing so much Spanish in the book kept the reader at an arms length.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes tells her lyrical story of coming of age against the backdrop of an ailing Philadelphia barrio, with her sprawling idiosyncratic, love-and-trouble-filled Puerto Rican family as a collective muse.

Quiara Alegría Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced in her grandmother's tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her aunts and uncles and cousins, but haunted by the secrets of the family and the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio--even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars. Her family became her private pantheon, a gathering circle of powerful orisha-like women with tragic real-world wounds, and she vowed to tell their stories--but first she'd have to get off the stairs and join the dance. She'd have to find her language.

Weaving together Hudes's love of books with the stories of her family, the lessons of North Philly with those of Yale, this is an inspired exploration of home, memory, and belonging--narrated by an obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty.

A beautifully refreshing memoir. There is so much to unpack I have been thinking about this book everyday since I finished reading it.

A memoir to rival most, My broken language is  Quiara Alegría Hudes chance to tell us of girlhood in Philadelphia, an adolescent at yale and a coming of age at Brown. She, like us all, has had many iterations, a daughter of immigrants, raised in a matriarchal community built on Puerto Rican spirituality and socialist values, a writer, a composer, a playwright. She has lived many lives and laid bare both her mistakes and accolades.

Language is at the heart, expressions of Spanish and Spanglish fall in equal measure. She talks of an upbringing surrounded by a community language, one that united her family but separated her as she climbed the echelons of social mobility, joining her middle-class counterparts studying Bach and Mozart, in the hallowed halls of Yale.

Background commentary on the AIDS epidemic, how it ravaged her specific community, how they lacked the words or desire to express the grief from a hideous disease, her phrasing is so poignant, she talks of hushed voices and gaunt cheeks, watching loved ones waste away and wondering in her childhood naivety, what she could have done differently. Poverty, neglect and gentrification are rife among her smart social commentary, houses that weren’t built to hold families, mothers who weren’t always equipped to raise sons.

There is an absence of masculinity as Hudes attributes much of her selfhood to her mother, a community activist and spiritual leader, a woman among women who raised her and her cousins, and taught them lessons of self-love and respect. She talks of the legacy of a body, the curves that were passed down through generations, the love she had for families of thick thighs and luscious chests, she speaks only of skinny when it shows illness and hurt, ‘I didn’t learn about [it] until blood sickness rolled into town’

it compares to in the dream house, to how we fight for our lives, to hunger a memoir of my body. It is a memoir of self hood and belonging, a white America obsessed with assimilation and a thriving community who are competing to show them, western isn’t the only way.

Empowering and beautifully written; touching on societal and identity issues through the examination of language and its structures, "My Broken Language" is definitely worth the read.