When I think I'm having a tough day, I need only recall the experiences Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez shares in her memoir My Side of the River and my privileged life snaps into perspective.
As a first generation American, her parents instilled a deep value of education as the key to the American dream. While her early childhood living with her parents was hard due to poverty, nothing prepared her for the devastation when they returned to Mexico and were denied reentry into the US.
With a relentless pursuit of education as her north star, Gutierrez endured several difficult living situations so she could graduate high school, earning the top spot in her class. Accepted into several prestigious colleges, she attended University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution, but floundered for a time in the posh, elitist environment. She faced continued racism and prejudice in her early career in the NYC finance industry.
The memoir explores several important topics including generational trauma, failed US immigration policies, and wealth disparity in our country. I'm usually not a fan of memoirs written early in a person's life, but Gutierrez has plenty of lived experiences worthy of documenting in this way.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the review copy of this powerful memoir.
As a first generation American, her parents instilled a deep value of education as the key to the American dream. While her early childhood living with her parents was hard due to poverty, nothing prepared her for the devastation when they returned to Mexico and were denied reentry into the US.
With a relentless pursuit of education as her north star, Gutierrez endured several difficult living situations so she could graduate high school, earning the top spot in her class. Accepted into several prestigious colleges, she attended University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution, but floundered for a time in the posh, elitist environment. She faced continued racism and prejudice in her early career in the NYC finance industry.
The memoir explores several important topics including generational trauma, failed US immigration policies, and wealth disparity in our country. I'm usually not a fan of memoirs written early in a person's life, but Gutierrez has plenty of lived experiences worthy of documenting in this way.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the review copy of this powerful memoir.
