Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter [Paperback]

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER (The Globe and Mail)
AGlobe and MailBest Book [2011]
AQuill & QuireBook of the Year [2011]
ANational PostBest Book [2011]
A BBC Radio Book of the Week [October 2011]
One of the CBC’s 15 Memoirs by Canadian Women Worth Reading [2015]
  

Six-year-old Carmen Aguirre fled to Canada with her family following General Augusto Pinochet's violent 1973 coup in Chile. Five years later, when her mother and stepfather returned to South America as Chilean resistance members, Carmen and her sister went with them, quickly assuming double lives of their own. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.

Something Fiercetakes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictator-ruled Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet's Chile in the eventful decade between 1979 and 1989. Dramatic, suspenseful and darkly comic, it is a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life and a passionate argument against forgetting. A coming-of-age story that blends birthday parties and puppy love with indoctrination in the tradecraft of subversion: how to arrange the delivery of secret documents, how to lose a police tail, how to lead a double life. Toronto Star

Raw, courageously honest and funny; an insightful journey into the formation of a revolutionary soul. The Globe and Mail

“Carmen’s book managed to stir my creative imagination, political conscience, and most importantly, my compassion. Speaking to the merits of Something Fierce on CBC’s Canada Reads 2012 program was a thrill and one of the great privileges I’ve had in my career.” Shad, JUNO Award–winning rapper
 
“Aguirre, who also works as a playwright, has the dramatist’s touch and finds a way to tell a difficult tale with narratils5