Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress

Rating:
Summary: conflicting impressions
Review: I'm not sure if this book deserves two stars or three. Its strong points are definitely in the language as well as the fact that the author did triumph over her past--and I wanted to be happier for the author than I ultimately was. However, after a while I really couldn't feel much sympathy/empathy for the author. The idea of a likable character may not apply in nonfiction/memoir, but still--I felt that by trying so hard to show that she was above what happened to her, she seemed to imply that she was above most other people as well. Her diction shows her intelligence, and it seems that she is trusting the reader will understand the language, but then she condescends with useless parenthetical definitions of relatively obvious words--"presenting" and "genetics", for example, and that "negro" is Spanish for "black"--as if the reader, lacking her superior intelligence, cannot figure them out. I don't have the author's education, but I winced when I encountered this. Perhaps I read too sensitively, but I felt mocked. Her condescension spoiled the effect for me, making beautiful phrases such as "denigration of crown" look merely pompous. If writers want readers to feel for them & where they're from, they should not alienate themselves by letting bitterness or gloating get in the way.