A couple of months after her mother passed away, Paz Ellis sat down to write. Ellis grew up in an expansive, tight-knit, mixed-heritage family in New Jersey. Her Dominican mother and Cuban father provided her with a family history and cultural legacy that informed her experiences and sense of self, which she examines in her memoir. The book that resulted from these meditations is a familiar yet revealing account of growing up as a mixed-heritage Latina in New Jersey that often feels less like a memoir and more like spending time with a close friend who has invited you to have a conversation and who shares her life story with you over a cup of café con leche.
Image courtesy of Paz Ellis.
In Plantains and the Seven Plagues: A Memoir: Half-Dominican, Half-Cuban, and Full Life, Ellis takes us through her life, beginning with her early childhood and continuing through adulthood and her own marriage, and finally recounts her parents’ passing. She writes about significant milestones and events in her life, but also lets us into the everyday and shares the quiet moments that formed the glue of her family relationships. That is what makes this memoir so relatable and captivating. For example, Ellis recalls early Saturday morning cleaning routines with her mother with the music on full blast. She recalls translating documents for her immigrant parents and serving as an interpreter during parent-teacher conferences. She muses on her father’s mourning of his Cuban homeland, and on the schisms his Cuban background caused when he married a Dominican woman. She reminisces about introducing her own future spouse, a white Irish American man, to her large Latino family. All of these snapshots and small moments add up to often funny, sometimes painful streams of memories that Ellis dives into as she interrogates the legacy of intergenerational trauma and reflects on what she wants to pass on to her own children.
It must be noted that Ellis is able to conjure the world as she experienced it in her childhood with compassion and ease, but she does so without glossing over the difficult realities of intergenerational trauma and its effects on the lives of the children of immigrants. Ellis wrestles with the ways that her mother’s struggle with depression and mental health and her father’s coping with disability impacted her and her family, as well as the effects that addiction, racism, and economic struggle all had on her upbringing. It is precisely Ellis’s honesty in confronting and sharing these issues on the page that makes the stories she tells engrossing, heart-breaking and relatable all at once.
Plantains and the Seven Plagues is many things. It is a deeply nostalgic and intimate reflection on a full life lived between cultures—Cuban, Dominican and American. It is a meditation on family legacy, storytelling, and intergenerational trauma as told through one woman’s life. But most of all, it is an utterly binge-able read that you can devour in one sitting, but that will make you want to slow down and savor every bite. If you are looking for an intimate and engaging read on family and memory, this one's for you.
Content warning for the inclusion of slurs: g*psy, and r*tarded.
Mariana Huerta was born in Mexico City and now lives in New England. She has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago and a background in Higher Education, but books are her one true love. She also runs the blog Latinas Leyendo which aims to highlight and celebrate books by and about Latinx folk. You can also find her book reviews on Twitter @latinasleyendo and Instagram @latinasleyendo.
