Weekend Listening: 'Something Fierce'

The audio sample you are about to listen to is the second chapter of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, by Carmen Aguirre. This book was the winner of the Canada Reads award in 2012 and published by D&M Publishers. Aguirre is a writer, actor and playwright living in Vancouver, B.C.

José Teodoro, a Toronto critic and playwright, reviewing Something Fierce in The National (May 2011) eloquently described Carmen's book:

"Something Fierce chronicles the development of the author's political self-actualization, a sense of mission that has informed not only her political activities but also her body of work as an actress and playwright. … It's also a coming-of-age story in the traditional sense, with first kisses, first periods, first loves, and eating disorders. One of its most compelling themes concerns the ongoing, arduous process of balancing one's ideals with the allure of fun, comfort and self-interest.

"Carmen possesses a tremendous gift for evoking the past through details such the smell of a rose bush, a village burning somewhere in the Andean night as glimpsed from a passing train, or the weird stillness of a house filled with glass poodles perched on white doilies, the house of Carmen's trio of great aunts, right-wing, life-long virgins who, she's told, masturbated nightly to Pinochet's portrait. (This last bit is but one example of the deliciously dark humour that permeates this book; another can be found in the chapter where Carmen makes a new friend in Buenos Aires who asks her if she's read the "wedding edition" of Mien Kampf).

"But the details most consistently evoked in Something Fierce concern what everybody was wearing. Carmen never forgets a good outfit. She's often scolded for her desire for cool clothes, but one of the delights of this narrative is its author's gradual, unspoken understanding that there's nothing inherently contradictory about fighting fascism in a fuchsia tube skirt. (Yes, she was a teenager in the 1980s)."

In Chapter 1, we meet the Aguirre family -- Carmen's younger sister, her revolutionary mother, her mother's partner, Bob, and the biological father they leave behind. The family is told that they will be moving to Costa Rica to fight the cause.

Chapter 2 begins with the Aguirre family arriving in Lima, Peru en route to Costa Rica and recounts the week they spend in the city, posing as upper-class Canadians for safety while passionate protest rages all around them.

To buy the full audiobook, visit Post Hypnotic Press.

Enjoy!