MY BROKEN LANGUAGE

A Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright presents a tender yet defiant tale about finding strength in one’s roots.

In this elegant and moving memoir, Hudes begins with her upbringing in Puerto Rico and Philadelphia, examining the complexities involved in negotiating two distinct worlds early on. At first, she fixated on the languages spoken around her and the ways in which their syllables and pronunciations told stories that would become woven into her own. As she grew older, however, her awe morphed into an acute awareness of her difference from other children, and she was embarrassed by her mother’s spiritualist practices. “I so wanted to take my dad’s side, join his disavowal of any god, his assertion that religion was the root of all evil,” she writes. “It would have brought a perverse relief to write off mom’s gift as gremlins of brain chemistry, to name some psychological diagnosis.” But as members of her family fell ill or became victims of violence, Hudes realized the significance of acknowledging the power of their stories and the importance of maintaining familial bonds and traditions. The text often reads like poetry, but it is also playful, the author toying with the barriers of language, and the narrative is propelled by the urgent notion that community matters in a world designed to push the have-nots further into the margins. It’s rewarding to see how, with the help of a loving mother and support network, Hudes derived power from her own culture and found success. She admits that the work is never fully finished. “No matter how far I traveled, how old I grew or how loudly I voiced us, our old silence chased me down, reaffirmed their hook,” she writes near the end. If the author’s worst fear is to be silent, she can rest assured that this memoir speaks volumes.

A beautifully written account of the importance of culture and family in a small but powerful community.