What I Wanted To Be When I Grew Up A Writer's Early Apprenticeship

These unusual memoirs by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo (distinguished writer and literary scholar, author of more than forty books) tell the story of the author’s life by tracing the effects of the books she read—from Little Women to Carmen Guerrero Nakpil—and the movies she watched, from childhood to high school. Their sources are the Diary she began keeping at the age of nine, and a collection of old snapshots and newspaper clippings, which she refers to as the Scrapbook. What distinguishes this from other coming-of-age narratives is the theme of writing as a form of coping—with feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, anxiety, alienation; in short, with adolescent angst—a strategy accidentally discovered from her own reading. And it is a narrative told, not just with the usual nostalgia, but also with humor, dispassionate candor, wisdom, and grace. The book also revisits the tales of her ancestors, as recounted, yet again, in texts—her mother’s journals and unpublished memoirs. Here she fin