I was inspired to read Paula after hearing Isabel Allende talk about her daughter at the Texas Library Association meeting in April 2007. Allende shares the story of her life through 1992, including the military coup disposing her uncle Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Paula is Allende's 28-year-old daughter, a newlywed in a coma from inherited (from her father) porphyria. Allende interweaves the story of her life with the story of her daughter's last year, spent in a hospital in Spain and Allende's home in California. Moving and magical.
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs: I read this "memoir" with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. I would have stopped reading before finishing it if not for my long-time book club. I hated this book. It comes across as making the mentally-ill mother look even worse because she trusts an even-more mentally-ill psychiatrist. According to Wikipedia, parts of the book may be untrue (shades of Frey's A Million Little Pieces?). Perhaps some memoirs should not be advertised as such, and should be marketed as fiction, when that is what they are. There are some similarities to Eugenides' Middlesex, but I thought the latter book was FAR better.
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya: I enjoyed reading this book as it really illuminated cultural practices (such as curanderas) in the Southwest in the mid 20th century. I found it especially interesting that there were cultural differences even within the protaganist's family, his mother's Lunas (moon) versus the Marez (the sea) of his father.
A student where I'm a librarian (Tarleton State University) wrote a thesis on this novel (which I also read), the premise being that Rudolfo Anaya used the main character of Antonio as "a window into his [Anaya's] progressively developing world view" to "describe the events he [Anaya] encountered which oriented, disoriented, and reoriented him into the world" (Cruz-Solano, Minerva Maria. Rudolfo Anaya's Bless me, Ultima : reshaping the "Dusty relics of distant memories," Thesis (M.A.)--Tarleton State University, April 1996, p. vii).
Examples of the orientation are the Catholic faith Anaya (and Antonio) grew up with, as well as the Aztec and Mexican myths and legends (on the creation and destruction of man, curanderas and brujas or witches, La Malinche and La Llorona, and Coyolxāuhqui) that they heard growing up.
Examples of disorientation are their questioning of their Catholic faith and the storytellers' tales, the educational system (particularly going from a Spanish-speaking home to an English-speaking classroom, and hearing the fables and fairy tales of the predominant culture), and conflicts in his parents' family traditions (farmers versus cowboys - believe me, a BIG issue here in the Southwest at that time!).
The reorientation is how Anaya and Antonio come to terms with these issues, for example, accepting aspects of both the Catholic and a more naturalistic faith (as represented by the golden carp in the book).
You don't have to be Catholic to understand the book, but I do think it makes some of the author/main characters' motivations easier to understand if you are. One also notes in the book that the river has a "presence" or alive-ness to it that I have often felt around rivers.
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