This was a really enjoyable reading experience. For one, I loved the illustration style of Weaver's panels, and I love that she went the Spiegelman route and gave us a lot of person background so we'd understand how to read her and her family's reactions to historical events. Four stars because I wish there had been more actual writing - the story had a lot of potential to branch out, especially when paired with such detailed illustrations. Missed opportunity there to give us a lot of depth.

In all, great read and I'd absolutely recommend it! ( )

The author recounts her childhood as an Argentinian immigrant in Marion, Alabama, in the 1960s, hitching her story onto the Civil Rights Movement by the happenstance that her family lived a block away from the protest that resulted in the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper, a catalyst for the marches from Selma to Montgomery.

There is an interesting comparison/contrast of her experience as a person of Spanish and indigenous descent in the Deep South versus that of the Black people she knew, but there is also a bit of a muddle in her narrative. While often living in the blissfully ignorant fog of being a child, she does eventually strive to be an ally in the struggle, but admits that one Black acquaintance rebuked her for overstepping. She sometimes presents what she hoped her late father did in certain situations she did not witness, but also includes a less idealized moment when he got angry at her for endangering his teaching job when rumors flew about her fraternizing with a Black male classmate. (Since she was only nine in 1965, she relies on the memories of her older siblings as well as historical sources for large portions of the book.)

There are some heavy-handed attempts to use photography and home movies as literary devices in the prologue and epilogue that didn't really work for me, but the majority of the book is pretty straightforward. With only one to five panels per page, it is also a quick read despite its thickness. ( )

I liked the potential for this story--growing up Argentinian in 1960s Alabama--but it didn't prove as striking of a perspective as I expected it to be. ( )

Lila and her family have emigrated from Argentina to the United States in 1961. They end up in Marion, Alabama at a time with racial tension and changes. The author is a brown-skin Latina in a word defined by black and white. The art is beautiful (it's a graphic novel), the setting is exciting, but the book doesn't capitalize on its great potential. It is, at times, hard to follow (members of the family go back and forth to Argentina) The language is sometimes stilted. Recountings of local uprisings are blunted by her narrow perspective (she was often confined to the house) and the high drama is ... meh... (being called a " n-lover" e.g.) There are some fine moments: the first black student, her black librarian (sadly, not a warm person)... her verbatim recounting of the AL history book). This memoir could have been so much more...!... I wish she'd wait a few years and add more detail/reflection. ( )

So I have a vague memory of requesting this after reading a review of it before I went on vacation. When I came back and saw it waiting for me I kind of had a huh? moment. I'm actually very glad that I requested it. It is the memoir of a hispanic woman growing up in a small town in Alabama during the Civil Rights movement. At the time as the author puts it, there were no slurs for them in Alabama yet. She talks a little about feeling like she never quite fit in but a majority of the book is about what happened and how both she and her family dealt with it and sometimes to the towns reaction to the way they dealt with it.

She also talks about how her family kept their ties with family in Argentina which is something that really interests me having just visited my family in Spain for the first time in 7 years. She talks about trying to keep family life and home life separate. Immigrant children and the children of immigrants will be able to relate in addition to anyone who has ever been a race or ethnicity that people just didn't know what to do with. The back drop of the civil rights movement just makes the whole story more interesting. She flat out talks about what she did notice growing up and what she didn't, which I think about a lot now. Things that were going on that I did and did not notice but probably should have when I was growing up. ( )