THE VIOLENCE: My Family's Colombian War, debut memoir/political history

THE VIOLENCE: My Family's Colombian War
ADRIANA E. RAMÍREZ
Scribner (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.8* of five (no perfect fives for the descendant of vandals!)

The Publisher Says: A powerful chronicle of Colombia’s descent into decades of civil war through the lens of an intimate, multi-generational tale of upheaval and betrayal.

When presumed president-elect Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, champion of the working class and harbinger of a new era of progressive social change, is assassinated on the eve of Colombia’s 1948 presidential election, the capital is plunged into bloodshed. So begins a singularly brutal period of Colombia’s history known simply as la violencia—a bloody civil war that spawned decades of turmoil and splintered the country into ever-shifting factions.

The Violence is an intimate history of this conflict—told not from the political center of the war but from the mountainous finca that Adriana E. Ramírez’s family tended to for generations, and through the eyes of her formidable grandmother, Esther. With startling lyricism, Ramírez illuminates the specter of violence—from guerilla warfare to the brutalities found so often in romantic relationships to the spontaneous and senseless violence steeped into everyday Colombian life during this period—and the threat that it poses to a country, and a family, that is trying to stay whole. Gracefully braiding together macrohistory, family history, and personal narrative, Adriana E. Ramírez traces these parallel stories of upheaval in a sweeping portrait of a country and family in flux.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

A Colombian aphorism says that to understand tomorrow, you need to make sense of yesterday. Like a long line of dominoes, one moment in time topples another, which topples another, until soon nothing stands.

Nothing stands when nothing is anchored, tied down, held in place. Change feels like chaos to those who like the status quo, and no one human likes chaos. Even the ones who cause it do so to achieve a goal, then they try to impose an order they like better than the one they destroyed.

Author Ramírez, whose father-in-law I proudly claim friendship with, tells the violent, chaotic story of the Colombian civil war of (more or less) 1948 to 1954 using the lens of her own family's participation (avoidance is also participation) in the events of the time. It is a dark, terrible one, this story; no one comes out of civil war without a smudge on their personal or familial reputation. I refer to an act of heinous vandalism on the corpus of History that Author Ramírez's family perpetrated...my inner historian was so wounded by it I was forced to lie down for an hour with a cool compress over my eyes. Murder, rape, torture...well, that's war isn't it...but burning records?!? *shudder* Unforgivable.

Fortunately my forgiveness is neither requested nor required. The family survived, the deeds done made the existence of this book possible. Its publication today, the fourteenth of April 2026, launches a writing career into a new literary orbit. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has, until now, been Author Ramírez's writing home so this memoir of history and family is her mark on the book-reading world. It is a story only she could tell, told with clarity and a great deal of honesty. If I'd discovered my family had burned records I would not admit it out loud, still less commit it to the permanent record of publishing it! Kudos for bravery, and may the Terminators of the history department that clearly must exist in some weird corner of spacetime choose not to expunge the bloodline.

I think I fell asleep watching a movie....

What made this a good read for me was the voice Author Ramírez chose to convey this blend of history and family memoir in. It is a book-length chat with a good raconteuse, a lovely, long chat after dinnner with an interesting friend. It is, as mentioned, dark of subject but not grim or gross of recounting. I do not think anyone's expectations of an involving, emotionally resonant read will be disappointed. I'm very glad I was introduced to the political complexities surrounding La Violencia in such a personal way. Reading about politicians and diplomats and US imperialism is definitely something I enjoy doing; I prefer to approach history with a flexible set of expectations, however, so seek out what more intimate and reflective storytelling I can find to enliven the public facts.

Author Ramírez has received warm reviews in multiple venues, most excitingly to me Time Magazine with its many millions of readers. The praise early readers like Idra Novey and Angie Cruz is praise she earned by careful and attentive wordsmithing. I've known since I began reading her journalism several years ago that Author Ramírez was both talented and skilled at the craft of writing. I am excited for us, the commmunity of readers, that she is also able and confident enough to listen to the muses' whispered inspiration and then to give us deep life-giving drafts of storytelling water.

THE NEW FACE OF SMALL-TOWN AMERICA, a ten-year-old study of the realities that piss off White Nationalists

THE NEW FACE OF SMALL-TOWN AMERICA: Snapshots of Latino Life in Allentown, Pennsylvania
EDGAR SANDOVAL
A Keystone Book
$24.95 trade paper, out of print

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Allentown, Pennsylvania, is a small city located along the Lehigh River in the eastern part of the state. Once the hiding place of the Liberty Bell, Allentown has become a popular destination for Latino immigrants. These Latinos, mostly from Puerto Rico, now make up about a quarter of the city's population, and their numbers continue to grow. The thirty-one stories collected in The New Face of Small-Town America do not reflect the reality of Allentown alone. With U.S. Census figures showing the arrival of Latinos in more small American cities than ever before, Allentown will continue to serve as an example.

These small cities have already experienced, or are about to experience, the transformation Allentown saw. Few communities embrace such change. It is only when one becomes familiar with a foreign concept (or foreigners) that fear disappears and understanding begins. Edgar Sandoval's essays show that behind the accents, ethnic customs, and other cultural differences exists a common humanity with universal problems and dreams. The Latinos profiled here want what everybody else wants: to fit in, to prosper, to offer their children a better future, to be recognized as important members of society by the mainstream. They want to coexist. These stories are not just about Latinos in Allentown, after all; they are about Latinos everywhere.

My Review: A series of newspaper columns written by a Mexican man hired to cover the largely Caribbean Latino population of the Lehigh Valley, this book offers a charming, if choppy and repetitious, insight into the new majority of many, if not most, smaller American cities, the Latinos.

Sandoval was hired by the (Anglophone) owners of the Allentown Daily Call to report on the 25% of the local population that the paper was simply missing. Typically, they hired someone from Mexico! These are *not* the same culture, not even a little bit, and the local Puertoriquenos and Nuyoricans and Dominicans were a little bit wary of the furrin dude with the wild-assed accent. He won them over by dint of his reportorial chops, his charm, and the way he could blend into the woodwork or the crowd, depending on the situational need.

The organizational thread of the book is...well...not very organized. It's all over the town, even the Valley. But it's a collection of newspaper pieces! It's NOT A NARRATIVE, so don't read it as such and you'll find it ever so much easier to enjoy. The book is intended by the author and the publisher to provide an Anglophone audience with a short entree into Latino life and community thought. This goal should be froemost in any reader's thoughts to make the book a successful reading experience.

Well, Mr, Sandoval and I hail from the same part of the world: Nine miles from Mexico, on the Texas/Nuevo Leon border. He's quite a lot younger than I am, but he was a reporter for The Monitor, the Rio Grande Valley's newspaper of record, so I betcha we know people in common: The longtime mayor of McAllen, Othal Brand, is a cousin of mine, and lots of the staffers at the paper know my brother from his years reporting there. So I started this book with a lot of points given to the writer for commonality of experience.

In the end, that is what gave me the reason to give the man 3.75 stars. Really and truly, the book isn't all that; not because Sandoval is deficient as a writer, but because the origin of the stories is a newspaper. There isn't any problem with that, basically, but it really doesn't make for a deep and hearty stew of a read, rather a tasty, lightly buttered toast-point with a decent pâté on it. Not bad at all! Just not something I'll charge about demanding others read instanter.

But do look into it if you're one of the many, many anti-immigrant idiots infecting the body politic. This is the story of your own ancestors, unless you're 100% Native American.