American Chica; Two Worlds, One Childhood

New York: The Dial Press, 2001. First Edition, this appears to be Second Printing (but may be first given the publication date of May 2001 is above the printing number line). Hardcover. Very good/Good. Lucy Bekheet (Author photograph). [8], 309, [3] pages. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads For Ginny, with all my warmest regards, Marie Arana December 2001. Ink notation on front of the DJ. DJ has wear and soiling. Marie Arana (born Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian author, editor, journalist, critic, and the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress. Marie Arana earned a B.A. in Russian at Northwestern University, an M.A. in linguistics at Hong Kong University, and a certificate of scholarship at Yale University in China. She began her career in book publishing, becoming vice president and senior editor at Harcourt Brace and Simon & Schuster. For more than a decade she was the editor in chief of "Book World", the book review section of The Washington Post, during which time she instituted the partnership of The Washington Post with First Lady Laura Bush and the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, in hosting the annual National Book Festival on the Washington Mall. Arana claimed to be the only Hispanic division head of the newspaper at this time. She for many years, directed all programming for the National Book Festival among numerous other programs at the Library. Arana is a Writer at Large for The Washington Post. Arana 's memoir about a bicultural childhood American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood (finalist for the 2001 National Book Award as well as the Martha PEN/Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir) and the author of Cellophane (a satirical novel which was a finalist for the John Sargent Prize). From her father's genteel Peruvian family, Marie Arana was taught to be a proper lady, yet from her mother's American family she learned to shoot a gun, break a horse, and snap a chicken's neck for dinner. Arana shuttled easily between these deeply separate cultures for years. But only when she immigrated with her family to the United States did she come to understand that she was a hybrid American, an individual whose cultural identity was split in half. Coming to terms with this split is at the heart of this graceful, beautifully realized portrait of a child who "was a north-south collision, a New World fusion. An American Chica." Through Arana's eyes the reader will discover not only the diverse, earthquake-prone terrain of Peru, charged with ghosts of history and mythology, but also the vast prairie lands of Wyoming, "grave-slab flat," and hemmed by mountains. In these landscapes resides a fierce and colorful cast of family members who bring her history vividly to life, among them Arana's proud paternal grandfather, Victor Manuel Arana Sobrevilla, who one day simply stopped coming down the stairs; her dazzling maternal grandmother, Rosa Cisneros y Cisneros, "clicking through the house as if she were making her way onstage"; Grandpa Doc, her maternal grandfather, who, by example, taught her about the constancy of love. But most important are Arana's parents, Jorge and Marie. He a brilliant engineer, she a talented musician. For more than half a century these two passionate, strong-willed people struggled to overcome the bicultural tensions in their marriage and, finally, to prevail.