Abuela Don't Forget Me

 

My Thoughts:

Rex Ogle follows his award winning free-verse #OwnVoices memoirs Free Lunch and Punching Bag with his newest offering, Abuela, Don't Forget Me. The author continues to stay in touch with his grandmother and as her memory starts to get tangled and confused in her mind, her grandson keeps her story alive through his poetry.

Like the other books, this is heart-wrenching and hard to read in its violence and abuse. However, in Abuela, Ogle brings forward this steady, strong woman who was his source of love and support. He brings forward through the poems all the little things (like the game of hiding in the hamper until she finds him) as well as the big things like accepting all of his collect calls, and wiring him money so he can always come home to her red-brick house in Abilene Texas. 

This book is definitely hard to read because of the cycle of abuse and poverty. I want to say it comes from his mother, but his mother is also reacting as a victim so it is hard to only blame her, but she is to be pitied, and Ogle shows this pity through his abuela and how she does not react even when her grandson lashes out at his own abuela out of shame and pity for his own different-ness. 

This does not hold back any punches and feels a little self indulgent, but that self-indulgence just highlights the strength of love his grandmother has for her family, and for the author. Our memories for our elders need to show the sacrifices and the ugliness in order to show the strength and resolve. This book does that for her. 

From the Publisher:

Rex Ogle’s companion to Free Lunch and Punching Bag weaves humor, heartbreak, and hope into life-affirming free verse that honors his grandmother’s legacy.

In his award-winning memoir Free Lunch, Rex Ogle’s abuela features as a source of love and support. In this companion-in-verse, Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on—to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in. Throughout a coming of age marked by violence and dysfunction, Abuela’s red-brick house in Abilene, Texas, offered Rex the possibility of home, and Abuela herself the possibility for a better life.

Abuela, Don’t Forget Me is a lyrical portrait of the transformative and towering woman who believed in Rex even when he didn’t yet know how to believe in himself.

Author: Rex Ogle

Publisher: Norton Young Readers

Publication date: September 6, 2022