MOTHERLAND by Paula Ramón, co-translated with Julia Sanches
Motherland, a memoir by Paula with translations from Julia Sanches and Jennifer Shyue, was published by Amazon Crossing in October 2023. In the span of a generation, oil-rich Venezuela spiraled into a dire state of economic collapse. Reporter Paula Ramón experienced the crisis firsthand as her middle-class family saw their quality of life deteriorate.
Public services no longer functioned. Money lost its value. Her mother couldn't afford to buy food, which was increasingly scarce. The once-prosperous country fell into ruin. Like many others, Ramón's family struggled to survive each day in their beloved city, Maracaibo—until, one by one, they each made the unbearable choice to leave the home they love.
In the end, it was Ramón's mother, a widow, who stayed behind, loyal to the only home she'd ever known. In this heartbreaking mix of lived experience, family chronicle, and journalistic essay, Paula Ramón explores the anguish of her own relationships set against the staggering collapse of a country. Named one of World Literature Today’s “75 Notable Translations of 2023.” Translated from Spanish.
“A Venezuelan reporter who left her home country in 2010 chronicles the traumatic fate of her family and her broken nation [...] Throughout, the author vividly portrays the unfolding tragedy shared by all Venezuelans. The collapse of a nation told through the poignant story of one family.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The author writes wrenchingly of her mother's struggles to provide for her and her siblings while their neighborhood deteriorated around them, and catalogs Venezuela’s political troubles with rigor and concision. It’s a fascinating and devastating account of one family’s fate amid a national crisis.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Terrific Venezuelan journalist Paula Ramon’s ‘Motherland’ is a joint study of a nation dying under authoritarianism, and a family pulling away, leaving their aging matriarch alone in ‘a concrete bunker’ of a home, a hotbox when the mismanaged electrical grids fail. Rarely are South American upheavals explained with such intimacy.”
—Chicago Tribune
Tags: Paula Ramon, Motherland, Spanish, Venezuela, prose, nonfiction, memoir, co-translation, book, World Literature Today, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Chicago Tribune, print