New memoir presented at the Hook

Cherríe Moraga will present her new memoir “Native Country of the Heart.” at the Mission Room at the Hook and Ladder Theater, 3010 Minnehaha Ave., on Thur., May 2, 7pm. The presentation is free and open to the public. The book is Moraga’s coming-of-age memoir.

“Native Country of the Heart” is, at its core, a mother-daughter story. The mother, Elvira, was hired out as a child by her father to pick cotton in California’s Imperial Valley. The daughter, Cherríe, is a brilliant, pioneering, queer Latina feminist. The story of these two women, and their people, is woven together in an intimate memoir of critical reflection and deep personal revelation.

As Moraga charts her mother’s journey—from an impressionable young girl to battle-tested matriarch to old woman—she traces her self-discovery of her gender-queer body and Lesbian identity, as well as her passion for activism. As her mother’s memory fails, Moraga is driven to unearth forgotten remnants of a U.S. Mexican diaspora, its indigenous origins, and an American story of cultural loss. Poetically wrought and filled with insight into intergenerational trauma, “Native Country of the Heart” is a reckoning with white American history and a piercing love letter from a fearless daughter to the mother she will never lose.

At this special Twin Cities event, Moraga will be in conversation with local author Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Self-described as a “queer black troublemaker,” Gumbs is a writer, scholar, and activist who currently teaches at the University of Minnesota.