Review: Someday Mija, You’ll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman by Yvonne Martinez
If you’ve been following along, you know by now how much I love memoirs. There’s something so…raw about reading about someone’s life from their perspective. I hope to one day write my own memoir (would anyone care?), but in the meantime, I enjoy reading other people’s stories — and more specifically — other women’s stories.
I had the honor of receiving an advanced copy of Someday Mija, You’ll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman by Yvonne Martinez. Intrigued by the title alone, I gladly ate it up. It tells the story of author Martinez’s tumultuous childhood and young adulthood, as well as what happens after she distances herself from her family. As mentioned in the blurb on the back of the book, Martinez flees a brutal and crushing domestic violence at age 18 and is taken in by her grandmother.
The prologue begins with the words, “On the first morning of her death, she lay with her arms wide and her palms facing heaven.” It’s just the first mention of religion, faith, and Catholicism that permeates through Martinez's life and therefore the memoir.
Martinez proceeds to tell stories of her life as seen through her eyes, as a child. The reader learns about the various people she was exposed to, the things she saw, and the things she wishes she could forget. I can only imagine how cathartic it was for Martinez to share her story — and how difficult it must have been to write some passages.
I never like to spoil any major parts of any book that I review, but I do want to touch on one of the most important (and disturbing) parts of Martinez’s life. It is also mentioned on the back of the book so I can with a clear conscience. Her grandmother, the same one who took her in when she needed it most, was trafficked by her own mother (who is presented as devotedly Catholic in spite of her actions) when she was a child.
What sounds shocking — and of course, it is — was more common than you would think. This was especially the case for desperately poor families during the Great Depression in the United States. Curious, I decided to look into it. Again, shockingly, but not shockingly, there isn’t that much information out there about it. It makes stories like Martinez’s even more important to share.
One thing I did find that I want to mention is how many Mexican Americans were deported out of the country during the Depression to “reduce relief roles.” We often hear of WWII-era internment camps for Japanese Americans, but I know that I had never heard of the Depression-era deportations. Sadly, it seems that as I get older and learn more about the history of my home country, the more ugly it starts to seem.
Martinez took her understandable and apparent anger and decided to do something positive with it. She gets an education, starts a family, and becomes an advocate and labor activist. She lays bare hidden sexual harassment within the labor unions where she works and fights to take down dirty unionists that she seems to come in contact with again and again.
The author also touches on how difficult it was for her to let go of so much transgenerational trauma. That said, she did it. And she did so through the stories that she shares in her memoir. She even goes on to say that reliving these traumas made her stronger and more resilient. In a short afterword that is just as powerful as the stories, she writes that,
“As an organizer/activist, writing these essays and doing the work to unlock the trauma, I found that hidden sources of resistance and resilience were unlocked too. I posit that trauma and resistance, like a double helix are bound together and are both passed down. That a healing journey unlocks both.”
It’s an honor and a privilege to experience Martinez's journey to unlock her trauma, and I would be remiss if I didn’t recommend it to my fellow memoir lovers. The book will be released by She Writes Press on October 18, 2022. You can preorder it on Bookshop.
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