The Little School

by Alicia Partnoy

Book Overview

One of Argentina's 30,000 "disappeared", Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured, and where most of the other prisoners were killed. Smuggled out and published anonymously, The Little School is Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573440299
• ISBN13: 9781573440295
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Cleis Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Absolutely profound

This book stirred up and anger and passion in my in me that I cannot express in words. You have to read it to beleive it!

The Little School

Imagine being kidnapped and being taken to a concentration camp, blindfolded, tied up and not knowing when you will ever see your family and friends again. What would you do if someone put a gun in your mouth? Alicia Partnoy proved to be a brave woman among others.What you must know is that this is a true story. It is like if you are reading something made up, but it is sadly true. It is greatly detailed and it even has a sense of humor at points. It is really amazing to see how Alicia talks about her experience and the other "disappeared" s' experiences. She was kidnapped. Did not know the whereabouts of her daughter. Her husband was kidnapped also, but they were not able to see each other. Even though she was away from them, she managed to think of them as little as possible, because she thought it would weaken her in trying to survive for them. She was always helping others in one way or another. Since they did not know when they were going to die, Alicia showed her compassion in their last hours. She was very generous when everything else was so ruthless. She shares part of her hideous life lived in the Little School, because even though she tells you what happened to her and her friends, she keeps the darkest moments to herself. It is personal, a very personal story. You should be thankful that she even wrote this book because she is informing you about what really happened at those times and how the guards treated them inside the Little School. This book demonstrates the true value of life. Some people overlook small things in life, but these small things grow to be very significant to Alicia when she was a prisoner. It shows the importance of your five senses, the ability to smell, to touch, to hear, to taste and to talk. She was able to see through her nose given that she was blindfolded and was able to create small balls out of bread. Talk about using your imagination at miserable times. This is just one of the things she learned to do when held captive. Read this book to find out how she did this and what else she discovered inside the concentration camp.

The Little School

Slippers, bread and a toothbrush: these everyday items are simple enough to most people in the United States, and other parts of the world, to take advantage of or even ignore. In Argentina in the mid to late 70's, however, these common items were enough to keep one young woman sane enough to escape captivity. In The Little School, Alicia Partnoy tells the very real stories of her capture and imprisonment in a government- run concentration camp. Partnoy spins tales of survival in a climate of oppression and death. These amazingly well told stories draw the reader into a terrifying world in which young men and women create and keep intensely strong bonds of camaraderie and friendship even as they have their human dignity is denied to them. The Little School is a book of short stories devoted to telling the true history of the 30,000 "disappeared" Argentines at the hands of the government from 1976 to 1979. Thousands of Argentines were taken captive in retaliation for civil disobedience to the government. In this book, Alicia Partnoy takes on the challenge of refuting the official statements made by the government denying the disappearances and making the truth achingly real. As a way of dealing with the reality of her ordeal, Partnoy uses her gift of storytelling to draw in the reader and make her feel what the prisoners felt. One of the key techniques that Partnoy employs in the telling of the stories in The Little School is continually changing the perspective from which the story is told. The story of Partnoy's own capture is told from a third person point of view as if a narrator is watching it take place. This is a very powerful tool because it shows that Partnoy uses her own encounter and terror as a means of showing how many, if not all, of the other imprisonments took place. Partnoy expends a lot of energy, as evidenced by this technique, in telling the stories of other people as well as her own. While she does, indeed, spend a fair deal of time telling her own experiences, she also speaks from the perspective of her friend Graciela and her experience being in the school throughout her pregnancy. In doing this, Partnoy takes one of life's most pure experiences and shows the inhumanity of the Argentinean government as they keep, and even torture, a woman who is with child. The stories told from Graciela's perspective shine a light on the true dignity that the prisoners displayed throughout their ordeals. While many people read books as a way of escaping into another world, Partnoy writes the stories in The Little School as a way to confront the very real ways in which she and others managed to band together in small acts of compassion toward each other and disobedience against their captors in order to mentally escape their confinement. Alicia Partnoy chose to, in writing The Little School, relive her experience in order to make the world understand what really happened to her and 30,000 others. In Partnoy's words,

Difficult but necessary

This is one of those books that takes guts to have on your shelf. But it is so very worth reading, and probably re-reading throughout your life. I had the pleasure of listening to Alicia Partnoy speak about this book and her voice is so soft and delicate compared to the strength of her words. After reading the book, I characterized her as a woman of such power (she had to have so much courage to withstand the torture); and in person she reminded me that she is simply human, having endured a terrible time of history both personally and for Argentina in general, and she carries that history with her throughout her life. While there are various good books about "disappearance" and exile with relation to Latin America, this one tops the lists.

A Survivor's Account of being "Disappeared"

During the military junta from 1976 to 1982, the Argentine military unleashed a reign of terror onto the Argentine community. In these years over 30,000 people, mostly between the ages of 18 and 35, just disappeared off of the streets. Most of them were never heard from again. A few were released. Yet with their "freedom" from the secret detention camps, came the reality of dealing with the atrocities of their imprisonment. The torture, isolation, beating, rape, electrocution they suffered in these secret prisons, where they were often kept blindfolded and bound for months, lives with them forever. The author of The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival, Alicia Partnoy, is one of the few disappeared during this time to have been released. This book documents the more than three months she spent in a secret detention camp known as "the little school." It tells of her and other prisoners' lives inside this nightmare. It describes the torture and humiliation they endured. It is a heartbreaking but inspiring story of hope and faith can triumph even under the most horrific conditions. It is impossible not to be moved to tears at some point during this book.