Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter - Tapa blanda

"Something Fierce is raw, courageously honest, and funny; an insightful journey into the formation of a revolutionary soul." The Globe and Mail

In Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, renowned actor Carmen Aguirre skillfully pilots readers straight into her girlhood initiation into a revolutionary family and ultimate decision, at age nineteen, to commit herself to the life of a radical. With vivid immediacy, Aguirre paints the political context and intimate experience of 1980s-era South American struggles against neo-liberal dictatorships: What does it feel like to be a child in the gun sights of Augusto Pinochet's henchmen? How did the US-backed governments of revolutionary Latin America collaborate in eliminating dissent at the cost of a still untold number of ruined lives?

Refreshingly frank, personable, and often wry, Something Fierce recalls the work of Gioconda Bellí and Assata Shakur, paying special attention to the particular demands made of revolutionary women to leave the raising of their children to others or directly involve them in struggle, to eschew romantic love for revolutionary action, to embrace "revolution" over "culture."

A literal page-turner, Something Fierce reveals how "normal" people confront a life of privation and communal action, of terror alongside an unerring dedication that offers its own satisfactions. Bearing witness to the costs, beauty, and even seductions of resistance, Aguirre impels us to question: Do we choose revolution, or does revolution choose us?

Carmen Aguirre is an award-winning playwright and actor with extensive credits in US and Canadian theater, film, and television.

CARMEN AGUIRRE is a writer and theater artist who has worked extensively in North and South America. She has written or co-written 18 plays, including The Refugee Hotel, which was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for best new play in 2010. Aguirre has over 60 film, TV, and stage acting credits, including a lead role in the independent feature Quinceanera, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Something Fierce is her first book. The first chapter of the book was published in the prestigious literary non-fiction journal Brick in the winter of 2007. Her writing has also appeared in Crank magazine, TIME magazine, The Vancouver Sun, and Aquelarre Magazine.

Aguirre founded The Latino Theatre Group, and directed it for ten years, was playwright-in-residence at The Vancouver Playhouse from 2000 to 2002, where she produced the Voices of the Americas reading series, and was playwright-in-residence at Touchstone Theatre in 2004. She facilitates Theatre of the Oppressed workshops around the province of British Columbia, working with: YouthCo, Fort Nelson First Nations, OXFAM, The Vancouver School Board, Seton Lake Indian Band, The Women's Correctional Centre, The Purple Thistle Centre, Arts Umbrella, and the Kitsilano Community Centre, among many others.

She worked as a facilitator for Headlines Theatre Company from 1994 to 1998, facilitating and directing dozens of Forum Theatre plays, and has worked extensively with Puente Theatre, the Victoria based immigrant theater company that specializes in popular theater. Carmen has studied with Augusto Boal, the creator of Theatre of the Oppressed, in Brazil and the United States. Her direction of Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters at Studio 58 garnered rave reviews and landed on The Vancouver Courier's top ten plays of 2007 list.

She has served on the editorial board for Crank magazine, on The Playwrights Guild of Canada s Women s Caucus, on the Advisory Committee for The British Columbia Arts Council, on the jury for The Canada Council for the Arts, and on The Jessie Richardson nominating committee.