A Message from God in the Atomic Age: A Memoir

by Gregory Rabassa (Translator), IreneVilar (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1997

  $3.35

  Alternating between Irene Vilar's notes from the psychiatric ward and her recounting of her family history, this is a meditation on family, and on the unspoken currents that have haunted a grandmother, mother and daughter. March 1, 1945: Lolita Lebron, a young Puerto Rican nationalist, opens fire on the United States House of Representatives, proclaiming, I did not come here to kill, I came here to die. She is sentenced to life in prison. March 1, 1977: after attending her son's wedding in Puerto Rico, Gladys Mendez (Lebron's daughter) leaps to her death from a speeding car driven by her philandering husband, despite her eight-year-old daughter's desperate attempts to restrain her. February 1, 1988: recently arrived from Puerto Rico to attend Syracuse University, Irene Vilar (granddaughter of Lebron and daughter of Mendez) is committed to Hutchings Psychiatric Hospital following a suicide attempt.