Whiskey Tender

Another installment in the ever-popular Poor Life Choices series, but with a twist: the author is self-aware. Sometimes a little too much so: her childhood reminiscences have more emotional depth than I can really buy. Sometimes I let it go, sometimes not so much, but this is a powerful book regardless. Part memoir, part history lesson, part ethnography, and one hundred percent filled with grace. Taffa is not gentle: not with colonizers, nor her family, nor herself. Throughout the book she expresses her childhood anger over shitty situations: at those who caused them and at those who perpetuate them. She doesn’t sugarcoat the violence, rage, helplessness she grew up seeing, or the systemic bigotry and humiliations she experienced everywhere she lived. She is candid about her childhood selfishnesses, in a way that demonstrates remarkable forgiveness toward herself and others. And in the end, this is not a spoiler, she makes good with her life.

It’s a complex book. The Taffa who wrote this is in her fifties, still (justifiably!) angry but now wise enough to focus her energy. This is a book for all of us in the Southwest, may we learn to see and prevent injustices.