Winner of Canada Reads A gripping, darkly comic first-hand account of a young underground revolutionary during the Pinochet dictatorship in s Chile. On September 11, , a violent coup removed Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, from office. Thousands were arrested, tortured and killed under General Augusto Pinochet's repressive new regime. Soon after the coup, six-year-old Carmen Aguirre and her younger sister fled the country with their parents for Canada and a life in exile.
In , the Chilean resistance issued a call for exiled activists to return to Latin America. Most women sent their children to live with relatives or with supporters in Cuba, but Carmen's mother kept her precious girls with her. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls' own double lives began.
something fierce
At eighteen, Carmen herself joined the resistance. With conventional day jobs as a cover, she and her new husband moved to Argentina to begin a dangerous new life of their own. This dramatic, darkly funny narrative, which covers the eventful decade from to , takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictatorship-run Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet's Chile. Writing with passion and deep personal insight, Carmen captures her constant struggle to reconcile her commitment to the movement with the desires of her youth and her budding sexuality.
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Something Fierce
I don't have anything much to add. Chile, Argentina and Peru. Mad times, mad people, an intensity of belief that expressed itself in action that I think the author, daughter of two revolutionaries, didn't 'catch' and never truly understood. It was a consistently good read but mostly because the people were so incredibly interesting and lived what they believed. The rather neurasthenic presence of the narrator, the daughter, picks up somewhat when she too becomes a revolutio The blurb says it all.
The rather neurasthenic presence of the narrator, the daughter, picks up somewhat when she too becomes a revolutionary, but one never gets the feeling that she does it because she is driven, more because she is 18 and it is expected. As it turns out, she is an actor, one who follows direction. View all 13 comments. Apr 22, Vicky "phenkos" rated it really liked it. This is a book that had me thinking about it at night after I'd gone to bed. And also during the day when I had to stop the reading and occupy myself with other things. I'd wait patiently for the time when I could go back to it, unable to put the book out of my mind.
It covers a time skipped or not fully accounted for in other accounts of Pinochet's dictatorship I'm aware of. It is the time after Allende's assassination and the initial sway of repression that held the country in its grip.
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I'd bo This is a book that had me thinking about it at night after I'd gone to bed. But this book starts later, six whole years after Pinochet's bloody coup, when the author's mother and stepfather decide to return to South America in response to the call of the Chilean resistance. Most other people who responded to the call left their children behind. Not so Carmen's mother, who believed that she shouldn't have to sacrifice motherhood for the sake of revolution or the other way round. The story of that return is told from the point of view of young Carmen who, at eleven years of age, has to leave her life as an exile in Canada and, together with her Mami, stepfather and younger sister Ale, travel back to South America on instructions from "above", often not knowing which country they were headed to next.
A life dedicated to the revolutionary cause unfolds with the children being thrust into a world of insecurity and danger not knowing whether their parents would come back home from their clandestine activities or disappear into the notorious cells of the secret police never to see the light of day again.
Carmen and Ale are surprisingly resilient and capable at dealing with the demands of life underground which was quite brutal for both the children and the adults. The dangers of being arrested meant that there had to be complete secrecy and no one was to be trusted as they could be a member of the secret police.
Keeping pretences and not letting on about the adult's activities was a must at all times. This creates a stifling atmosphere thankfully broken, albeit briefly, by trips to the children's grandmother in Chile or to their father back in Canada. As Carmen gets older and starts to have boyfriends, the two worlds collide: And that is precisely what she does when she turns twenty and joins the resistance herself, taking on the risky task of transporting documents over the border between Argentina and Chile.
Despite having an very different upbringing to Carmen's, I felt for her every time she was scared but couldn't admit to it because that might drag everybody down or because it's not the "done" thing. At times, I felt angry with her mother and stepfather for placing impossible demands on the children, piling them with guilt as when stepfather Bob chides the girls for their "bourgeois tastes" when they display some displeasure at moving to a simpler house than they had previously occupied. How did that happen? Was it disagreements over whether to participate in the approaching elections?
Just as we see light at the end of the tunnel, it appears that the work done has not brought the desired result. We are left with a bitter taste, and wishing we received a bit more feedback in a book that is understandably not a political analysis but a personal memoir. Still, the book revealed a lacuna and a need for the history of that movement, its defeats and victories, tactics and politics, to be told and explained.
Jan 06, Vicki rated it liked it. Not until close to the end of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter does Carmen Aguirre seem to finally and tellingly encapsulate the profound trauma that the life forced on her by her Chilean revolutionary parents had wrought on her bodily, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.
To that point, Something Fierce had intermittently captured my interest with its understandably uneven account of a girl growing to young womanhood living the double and triple life of a political Not until close to the end of Something Fierce: To that point, Something Fierce had intermittently captured my interest with its understandably uneven account of a girl growing to young womanhood living the double and triple life of a political refugee in Canada and undercover resistance operative in Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile.
The story veers from a firsthand account of the upheaval, injustice and at times mortal danger of the brutal Pinochet regime - in essence, the disturbing and enraging facts and figures of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine brought to life - to the fancies, dreams, desires, fashion and pop culture whimsies, moods and petulance of a typical teenager perhaps anywhere in the world.
Read my complete review here: Aug 21, Melanie Mel's Bookland Adventures rated it liked it. This was a mad book. Mad in terms of the things Carmen and her sister Ale lived through as her exiled Chilean mother and her stepfather takes them from Canada back to Latin America to become underground revolutionary with the aim to take Chile back from Pinochet with force. Carmen has some crazy, terrifying experience, plus has to live with the fact that she cannot tell anyone about her life, her r This was a mad book. Carmen has some crazy, terrifying experience, plus has to live with the fact that she cannot tell anyone about her life, her real purpose, she has to lie to everyone, live in constant fear of discovery, saying the wrong thing, causing suspicion in others, that one day her mother or her stepfather do not return.
Carmen is 11, when they leave Canada. What I thought she did brilliantly is that she focuses on her journey, there is little on the impact on her sister or her parents that has not to do with the impact that has on her. Whilst I respect that, it makes it seem at times a bit lacking in perspective. She does not go into great detail on certain aspects of South American events if those events only had impact on her in passing.
I know many readers found that frustrating, yet, to me this is one of the strengths of this book for me. She focusses on her story alone, if she only passes through the civil war in Peru, she only mentions it in passing. She lives through the upheaval in Bolivia in the late 70ies: Ultimately, this is an interesting story and very easy to read, but as I so often find with autobiographies for me is that what I am most interested in hearing is the part of the story that is not told.
Her choice, her story, I know. Aug 20, Laura rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Born a week after the death of Che Guevara, Carmen Aguirre was always destined to become a revolutionary. After Pinochet's violent coup in Chile in , her family is forced to flee to Canada. And when, a few years later, the Chilean resistance calls for exiled activists to return to fight the cause, Carmen's mother heeds the call.
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Determined to make mini revolutionaries of her two daughters, she takes them with her - and so Carmen's double life begins. Posing as a westernised teenager by day, at night she is drilled in surveillance techniques, cryptography and subterfuge, not to mention political theory and revolutionary history.
It is a time of high excitement, but also one of fear and paranoia, of who to trust, and who to fear. From Pinochet's repressive rule in Chile, to Shining Path Peru, dictatorship-run Bolivia to post-Malvinas Argentina, this is a darkly comic coming-of-age memoir is a rare first-hand account of a life as teenage revolutionary.
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It is also the story of a young girl trying to reconcile her commitment to the cause with her very unrevolutionary new interests in boys, music and fashion. After a perilous visit to her beloved Chile, Carmen finds herself questioning her commitment to the cause. Carmen Aguirre is a playwright and actor, now living in Vancouver. Jul 18, Melinda Doucette rated it it was amazing.
I am thankful to the author for having written this book. I feel like I learned something about the world I wouldn't have otherwise ever known. I'm in awe of revolutionaries and people who dedicate their lives to what they fiercely believe in. This book made me laugh and cry and overall had a huge impact on me. Mar 26, Joanne Guidoccio rated it really liked it. Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. While most of us were fascinated by the book and welcomed the opportunity to learn more about Chile, we had different opinions regarding the parenting of Carmen and her sister, Ale.
When Carmen was five years old, her family left Chile and began a new life in Vancouver. Separated from her husband, Mami decided to take her two daughters with her. Moving from city to city and country to country across South America, the children were left with a revolving door of babysitters as Mami and her partner, Bob, were on assignment.
At one point in the story, Carmen is left alone too long and her money runs out. Born in an upper middle class home, Mami was not raised in the Resistance movement and had no clue about its effects on young children. Mami took to heart the words of her Resistance oath: I will die for the cause if need be.
From now on, my entire life is dedicated to the cause, which takes precedence over everything else. In writing Something Fierce, Carmen Aguirre has filled that void. An excellent read that will evoke strong feelings. May 01, Steven Langdon rated it really liked it. It is a well-written and involving account of the growing up of a Chilean daughter, transferred to Vancouver after Allende's overthrow, who came to adulthood through years of working, first with her mother, then by herself, for the defeat of the illicit Pinochet regime that replaced democratic government in Chile.
This is a remarkable book on several levels. First, it recounts what it was like growing up in such unusual circumstances of deeply-defined political rebellion. Carmen Aguirre found herself moving rapidly from place to place. She was often lied to about what was to happen. She found herself left alone with her younger sister to cope with few sources of food, while her mother was trying to organize resistance in Chile. She could not contact her father in Vancouver. And not surprisingly, over time, this made her independent and rebellious -- rupturing her relations with her mother.
The dynamics of this entire process are recounted honestly in this book, and make for an unusual and compelling story. But there is also a second and even more interesting aspect of this book. Carmen came in her young life, despite her complicated relations with her mother, to commit herself to revolution in Chile and Argentina.
And this book becomes a dramatic first-hand account of what living underground is all about -- a description of undercover work in Chile itself -- and a very human story of the difficult yet touching relationships that women and men try to build in such dangerous conditions. Somehow, Carmen survived this struggle, just as somehow Chile has survived Pinochet. But this book is a memorial to the very human courage that was required to stay so fierce for so long. Mar 12, Mary Billinghurst rated it really liked it.
I read very little non-fiction and am often disappointed when I do. Something Fierce, however, is well worth reading. Growing up as I have in middle class comfort in "socialist" Canada, I have been ignorant too long of the plight of so many of the people who live in South American countries. The struggle to achieve decent education and health care for all, regardless of class and colour, is ongoing in many of those countries, and in particular, the author's homeland of Chile. Many years ago, I sa I read very little non-fiction and am often disappointed when I do.
Many years ago, I saw Costa Gravas's excellent film, Missing, about the injustices carried out during the Pinochet regime. I had no idea how long these injustices continued, however. In fact, Pinochet's rule still has repercussions today. I have Carmen Aguirre's book to thank for educating me about the man and his legacy.
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I also learned a great deal about Bolivia and Argentina during the same time, both countries with their own struggles against inequality. Aguirre's youth as the child of rebels is, at times, completely "normal", and at others, shockingly deprived and difficult. The author is very open about her adolescent coming of age, under very trying circumstances. I appreciate her sharing these parts of her life with us.
She is truly an inspiration! Unlike many others, I do not fault Aguirre's mother for her choice of living the life of a rebel. Only those who make great personal sacrifices can affect change in the world. Apr 13, Karen rated it liked it Shelves: As the winner of 'Canada Reads', I expected to like this one a bit more than I did. It was interesting to learn more about South American history and culture I now have La Paz on my list of places to visit , but I found it hard to connect with 'Carmencita' for some reason.
I kept waiting for something big to happen, but things and events seemed only to happen around her or to those close to her. Perhaps that's where the disconnect stems from: I expected a book about revolu As the winner of 'Canada Reads', I expected to like this one a bit more than I did. I felt like there was no climax and the story just eventually petered out so it left me feeling a little disappointed. Jul 19, Katherine rated it liked it. The awkward case of 'his or her'.
something fierce
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