The Book of Emma Reyes

A Memoir

Author  Emma Reyes Introduction by  Daniel Alarcón Translated by  Daniel Alarcón
The Book of Emma Reyes

“Startling and astringently poetic.” —The New York Times

An extraordinary account, in the tradition of The House on Mango Street, Child of the Dark, and Angela’s Ashes, of a Colombian woman’s harrowing childhood defined by uprootedness and migration

Emma Reyes was an illegitimate child, raised in a windowless room in Bogotá with no water or toilet and only ingenuity to keep her and her sister alive. Abandoned by her mother, she moved with her sister to a Catholic convent, where she scrubbed floors and mended garments for the nuns—and lived in fear of the Devil. Illiterate and knowing nothing of the outside world, she escaped at age nineteen, eventually establishing a career as an artist, befriending the likes of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera…