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  • Something Fierce

  • Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter
  • Written by: Carmen Aguirre
  • Narrated by: Carmen Aguirre
  • Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (18 ratings)

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Something Fierce cover art

Something Fierce

Written by: Carmen Aguirre
Narrated by: Carmen Aguirre
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Publisher's Summary

Winner of CBC's Canada Reads 2012 and Globe 100 Best Book of the year in 2011!

Carmen Aguirre was six-year-old when she and her family fled to Canada following General Augusto Pinochet’s violent 1973 coup in Chile. She was only eleven-years-old when her mother and stepfather joined the resistance movement and returned to South America, taking Carmen and her sister went with them. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls' own double lives began. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.

Something Fierce covers the eventful decade of 1979 to 1989 and takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictator-ruled Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet’s Chile in the eventful decade between 1979 and 1989. Writing with passion and deep personal insight, Aguirre captures her constant struggle to reconcile her commitment to the movement with the desires of her youth. Dramatic, suspenseful and darkly comic, it is a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life and a passionate argument against forgetting.
©2011 Carmen Aguirre (P)2012 Post Hypnotic Press Inc.
Ideologies & Doctrines Political Science Biographies & Memoirs South America
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What the critics say

"Aguirre's riveting memoir chronicles her childhood as the daughter of Chilean resistance fighters...[her] writing is splendid; she combines black humor and a sharp intellect and tells her powerful story in grand style." ( Publishers Weekly)
"In a voice that rings beautifully and heartbreakingly true - filled with tenderness, confidence, vulnerability, compassion, fear, and courage - Something Fierce movingly renders the normal difficulties and pleasures of adolescence as they collide with the urgent sacrifices and consequences of clandestine political struggle. Only a real writer could do justice to such a remarkable story, and Carmen Aguirre proves up to the task at every turn - an overwhelming and inspiring read." (Casey O'Neil, Elliott Bay Book Company)
"Only Aguirre could have written this book. She has given us the gift of her own experience." ( New Socialist)

What listeners say about Something Fierce

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Profile Image for Johannah

Such an important and courageous story

This book is more important than ever in these times of unbridled neoliberalism. Carmen's story reminds that there is, there has always been, resistance to the brutalized of capitalism and neoliberalism. May we carry the spark of resistance in all of our hearts forward to revolution.

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Profile Image for Anonymous User

It felt as if you had lived it.

A real eye opener for what happened in South America and Central America. The military suck, we should never support and send our children because one day they might be killers or torturers. People need to listen to these kinds of books and know the real world we live in and not what they sell in television or internet. Capitalizism also sucks, it should be flushed down the toilet just the shit from all of us. Loved the book and brave brave girl.

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Profile Image for Jusbookshelf82

Loved it!

Really an amazing read! I love how it reads as fiction, i had to keep reminding myself it is a true story! The people of Chile are résiliant and strong, which is proven again and again within this book! Carmen also does an amazing job at narrating!

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