Amigas: Letters of Friendship and Exile (Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series)
Good friends who were exiled to the United States at the start  of General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in 1973, poet Agos!n  (Spanish, Wellesley Coll.) and journalist Sep#lveda (foreign  languages and literature, Univ. of Nevada) have created a kind  of memoir by compiling their 35-year-long correspondence. The  collection moves from the trials and tribulations of their  adolescence in Chile Sep#lveda was brought up in an oppressive  Italian Catholic household, and Agos!n battled with  discrimination as a Russian Jew to the terror of their fellow  Chileans during Pinochet's overthrow of Allende, the most  gripping part of the collection. Once they settled in the United  States, the letters address the need to start from scratch in an  entirely new language and culture. Throughout, the authors  manage to weave in compelling vignettes about current Latin  American politics, feelings of alienation, racism, the ironies  of democracy, and the hollowness of academia. Though at times  the later letters are pedestrian (especially when the women are  writing about their jobs, marriages, and kids), in context, it  is obvious that the authors are still trying to recover from  leaving an entire world behind. As Agos!n writes, "It was the  country that saw us grow and gave us words, but also gave us  silence." Recommended for both women's studies and Latin  American studies collections. Adriana Lopez, "Cr!ticas"Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.