Try to Remember

by Iris Gómez

Book Overview

An award-winning poet and expert in US immigration and asylum law delivers a powerful novel about a daughter's attempt to sustain her family as her father struggles with his mental health. "Lyrical,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 044655619X
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.0" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

A Must Read

I read the book over the weekend and it felt as if I was reading about my own formative years! Loved the Spanish in it and the editorials on translations-- finally understood the meaning of "el que espera desespera," and the sentence that stuck with me is "fixing the parts instead of what's broken;" it's up there with "make haste slowly!" The weekend storms provided the perfect setting for reading the last chapters... and I will forever remember the decency of El Chino. This is a Must Read for the immigrants among us, to remind us that our experiences aren't isolated, AND for anyone who works with immigrant families. I'm saving it for my 13 year old for the Summer. Luz Arevalo

One of the best books I've read all year!

TRY TO REMEMBER is a beautifully written novel that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat--not through a steroid-pumped plot, but by painting the very real terror of an immigrant teen's life. Deportation, jail, drugs, rape, pregnancy--these are all the dangers waiting for Gabriela de La Paz, adolescent daughter of Colombian immigrants. The reader spends most of the novel waiting to see which of these dangers is going to bring her down. But this is not just a story about the hazards of being an illegal immigrant. It's a story about the dangers of family: How the same people who are supposed to help us can drag us under. When Gabriela's proud, temperamental father begins to behave in increasingly bizarre, even violent ways, the effect on her family is like a time bomb suddenly appearing in their livingroom. Gabriela's mother refuses to acknowledge the change. Her brothers find ways to escape, through work and friends and drugs. Only Gabriela--barely an adolescent when the novel opens--can keep the family from blowing apart. Iris Gomez is an award-winning poet and immigration lawyer. She was born in Colombia and writes with the kind of intelligence, authority and lyricism that even her fellow countryman, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, would have to admire. TRY TO REMEMBER is a stunning debut novel. And in Gabriela de la Paz, you will find one of the most intelligent, sympathetic and unique characters you have ever met. A must-read!

Wonderful, Interesting, Engaging read - must read!

I enjoyed reading Try to Remember tremendously! The story is engaging; the writing is well done; the character development is very interesting. I really like that the book is written in the voice of Gabriella and how Ms. Gomez uses Spanish words and phrases without defining them but saying things that let the reader know from the context what they mean. I am so glad I decided to read this and look forward to the next (will there be a next? I'm hoping) book.

you will never forget TRY TO REMEMBER

I absolutely adored this novel, about a Colombian family's struggles to adjust to life in 1970s Miami. Told from the point of view of young Gabriela, the daughter, nicknamed "The Helper" by her family because she must help her non-English-speaking parents understand their new world, TRY TO REMEMBER looks at what it means to be an emigrant in our country--a timely topic! Told with warmth, humor, and beautiful language, the novel is like taking a trip to Gabriela's Florida, complete with hurricane, mango trees, and dulce de leche--but it also explores the very serious topics of mental illness (Roberto, the dad, exhibits signs of schizophrenia) and offers heartbreaking scenes of a family desperate to protect the sick one while trying to survive. TRY TO REMEMBER also follows Gabriela as she tries to figure out where her loyalties lie: with her family or in becoming an assimilated American teen? This book will make you laugh and make your throat close with tears. You won't forget Gabriela and her family.

Torn Between Family & the World

Try to Remember is a beautifully written, haunting story of a girl torn between caring for her immigrant mother and father--neither is facile in English and her father suffers from a mysterious mental impairment of which her mother is ashamed--and her dreams to soar higher than her parent's aspirations for her (in school, in love, and in her someday career) This conflict causes her to question her loyalty to her family as it collides with fealty to her own future. Page turning, poetic, and achingly true--I highly recommend this wonderful book that captures time, place and the plight of a child of immigrants.