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Stealing: Life In America: A Collection of Essays
KIRKUS REVIEW
Debut author Cacho-Negrete identifies the trends in American life that shaped her in this debut collection of personal essays.
“I remain an immigrant, poverty my country of origin.” So writes Cacho-Negrete early in this volume. Raised by an immigrant Jewish mother in Brooklyn during the 1950s and ’60s, the author was a self-described “street kid”—one of a large demographic of latchkey children without much supervision or access to opportunity—who transcended her lot in life via education and a little luck. In the first essay, “Stealing,” the author recounts the two periods of her life when she routinely shoplifted goods from as a street kid to help feed her impoverished family and again as a divorced mother of two who found herself struggling to stay afloat in her tony suburb. In “The Season of My Grandfather,” she writes about her interactions with her mother’s estranged father, whom she met as a girl, sent by her mother to pick up payments for an outstanding debt. Not every essay is so dire, however. “Hair” recounts Cacho-Negrete’s struggle to accept her curly hair as a teenager when it did not conform with mainstream conceptions of beauty. “On the Fire Escape” describes how that particular architectural feature, so associated with New York, played a role at various points throughout the author’s life. Cacho-Negrete writes with a sharp, confident prose that evokes her settings with hyperreal “We lived in tenements that leaned against each other for protection, their plastic-covered windows blind eyes in winter that popped open in spring to spy into each other’s apartments. The hallways stunk from piss, pot, cheap perfume, cigarettes.” The essays serve as a sort of fractured memoir, one that seeks to underline the iniquities inherent to the American experience. Even this political angle, however, is a piece of supporting information that adds to the autobiography. These are the foundational stories of Cacho-Negrete. They explain why she thinks the way she does. Whether or not the reader comes away thinking the same things, this brief residence in the author’s head is illuminating.
A pointed, energetic collection of personal essays. (Kirkus Reviews)
“In this beautifully crafted, incisive collection, readers will admire Michelle Cacho Negrete's determination and fierce desire to transcend her early Brooklyn ghetto roots--particularly her sense of herself as a displaced outsider. What's also impressive about Stealing is not only how candid and open the author is, but how vividly she describes this complex human struggle.” (Michael Steinberg -Author, Still Pitching)
“Michelle writes with grace and clear-eyed, unsentimental vision.” Sy Safransky, Editor, Sun Magazine)
“Cacho-Negrete champions the poor, the marginalized…Throughout this profound, compelling collection, she preserves the vanishing past with a hard-hitting yet lush remembrance.” (Lee Hope Betcher, Editor Solstice Literary Magazine)
“With crisp, confident prose, Michelle explores the intricacies of our world in essays simultaneously unique and universal. A book to be read many times.” (Barry Lyga - Best Selling New York Times author)
“The America we face in these timely essays is often poor, frequently unjust, sometimes heartbreaking – and always illuminated by the author’s fearless truths, keen insights, and fighting spirit.” (Krista Bremer – prize winner lecturer and author of My Tender Struggle.)>br>
“Here is the power of the written Alone in his room, the reader feels a strengthened connection to all of humanity.” (Gin Mackey, Author)
“These stories grab hold and won’t let you go. They will change you.” (Anne B. Gass, lecturer, author - Voting Down The Rose)
“Although these are separate essays, they are linked by these consistent themes and form in themselves an engrossing and beautifully-written memoir.” (Jenny Doughty -Maine Poets Society)
Debut author Cacho-Negrete identifies the trends in American life that shaped her in this debut collection of personal essays.
“I remain an immigrant, poverty my country of origin.” So writes Cacho-Negrete early in this volume. Raised by an immigrant Jewish mother in Brooklyn during the 1950s and ’60s, the author was a self-described “street kid”—one of a large demographic of latchkey children without much supervision or access to opportunity—who transcended her lot in life via education and a little luck. In the first essay, “Stealing,” the author recounts the two periods of her life when she routinely shoplifted goods from as a street kid to help feed her impoverished family and again as a divorced mother of two who found herself struggling to stay afloat in her tony suburb. In “The Season of My Grandfather,” she writes about her interactions with her mother’s estranged father, whom she met as a girl, sent by her mother to pick up payments for an outstanding debt. Not every essay is so dire, however. “Hair” recounts Cacho-Negrete’s struggle to accept her curly hair as a teenager when it did not conform with mainstream conceptions of beauty. “On the Fire Escape” describes how that particular architectural feature, so associated with New York, played a role at various points throughout the author’s life. Cacho-Negrete writes with a sharp, confident prose that evokes her settings with hyperreal “We lived in tenements that leaned against each other for protection, their plastic-covered windows blind eyes in winter that popped open in spring to spy into each other’s apartments. The hallways stunk from piss, pot, cheap perfume, cigarettes.” The essays serve as a sort of fractured memoir, one that seeks to underline the iniquities inherent to the American experience. Even this political angle, however, is a piece of supporting information that adds to the autobiography. These are the foundational stories of Cacho-Negrete. They explain why she thinks the way she does. Whether or not the reader comes away thinking the same things, this brief residence in the author’s head is illuminating.
A pointed, energetic collection of personal essays. (Kirkus Reviews)
“In this beautifully crafted, incisive collection, readers will admire Michelle Cacho Negrete's determination and fierce desire to transcend her early Brooklyn ghetto roots--particularly her sense of herself as a displaced outsider. What's also impressive about Stealing is not only how candid and open the author is, but how vividly she describes this complex human struggle.” (Michael Steinberg -Author, Still Pitching)
“Michelle writes with grace and clear-eyed, unsentimental vision.” Sy Safransky, Editor, Sun Magazine)
“Cacho-Negrete champions the poor, the marginalized…Throughout this profound, compelling collection, she preserves the vanishing past with a hard-hitting yet lush remembrance.” (Lee Hope Betcher, Editor Solstice Literary Magazine)
“With crisp, confident prose, Michelle explores the intricacies of our world in essays simultaneously unique and universal. A book to be read many times.” (Barry Lyga - Best Selling New York Times author)
“The America we face in these timely essays is often poor, frequently unjust, sometimes heartbreaking – and always illuminated by the author’s fearless truths, keen insights, and fighting spirit.” (Krista Bremer – prize winner lecturer and author of My Tender Struggle.)>br>
“Here is the power of the written Alone in his room, the reader feels a strengthened connection to all of humanity.” (Gin Mackey, Author)
“These stories grab hold and won’t let you go. They will change you.” (Anne B. Gass, lecturer, author - Voting Down The Rose)
“Although these are separate essays, they are linked by these consistent themes and form in themselves an engrossing and beautifully-written memoir.” (Jenny Doughty -Maine Poets Society)
210 pages, Paperback
Published October 12, 2017
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 6, 2020
Michelle Cacho-Negrete’s personal narratives of a life that sprung from a Brooklyn Ghetto explore how she has been challenged, changed, and honed by her experiences. The oftentimes bleak, but meaningful, experiences shaped Cacho-Negrete into an elegant writer and a magnanimous human being. While the experiences may have been stark, the writing is luminous.
Each essay is an excursion into a different landscape and a different social milieu, and together they add up to a moving and powerful memoir. The first essay, “Stealing,” shows Cacho-Negrete as a child staving off hunger and cold for herself and her brother by shoplifting food and clothing. Later that skill enables her to feed her own children while she’s between jobs. One comes away with a sense of the resilience her childhood foisted upon her.
The most heart-breaking essay “Heat” shows Cacho-Negrete getting an early understanding of the horrors of sexual abuse when, as a 14-year-old girl, she discovers a disabled woman is being regularly raped by the boss of the factory where she gets her first job. Although she insists that her supervisor protect the disabled woman, Cacho-Negrete is ultimately unable to stop the abuse, and this experience helps form the grown woman who dedicates her life to helping victims reclaim their lives.
There’s not a clunker in the whole collection. Each story is crisply told with just the right attention to the telling detail. While each essay is a gem, the one I loved the most told the story of a dying friend. Cacho-Negrete describes her friend as a woman whose hair grows back after chemo “in the short silver curls of Roman boys in old frescoes.” The tribute overflows with love and introspection, reflecting on how we change over time and what remains the same.
Michelle Cacho-Negrete’s generosity of spirit, her keen eye, and her trenchant observations give us insight into what it means to be a witness to your own life. Some of the essays read like extended poems. When she writes about time passing in a second-person essay about her first husband, she tells us that “the years were a revolving door, the kids one year older, and stronger, and smarter, and more independent each time they came around and the two of you only visitors in each other’s lives…your last act to save all of you from being drowned in fury.”
Each essay is an excursion into a different landscape and a different social milieu, and together they add up to a moving and powerful memoir. The first essay, “Stealing,” shows Cacho-Negrete as a child staving off hunger and cold for herself and her brother by shoplifting food and clothing. Later that skill enables her to feed her own children while she’s between jobs. One comes away with a sense of the resilience her childhood foisted upon her.
The most heart-breaking essay “Heat” shows Cacho-Negrete getting an early understanding of the horrors of sexual abuse when, as a 14-year-old girl, she discovers a disabled woman is being regularly raped by the boss of the factory where she gets her first job. Although she insists that her supervisor protect the disabled woman, Cacho-Negrete is ultimately unable to stop the abuse, and this experience helps form the grown woman who dedicates her life to helping victims reclaim their lives.
There’s not a clunker in the whole collection. Each story is crisply told with just the right attention to the telling detail. While each essay is a gem, the one I loved the most told the story of a dying friend. Cacho-Negrete describes her friend as a woman whose hair grows back after chemo “in the short silver curls of Roman boys in old frescoes.” The tribute overflows with love and introspection, reflecting on how we change over time and what remains the same.
Michelle Cacho-Negrete’s generosity of spirit, her keen eye, and her trenchant observations give us insight into what it means to be a witness to your own life. Some of the essays read like extended poems. When she writes about time passing in a second-person essay about her first husband, she tells us that “the years were a revolving door, the kids one year older, and stronger, and smarter, and more independent each time they came around and the two of you only visitors in each other’s lives…your last act to save all of you from being drowned in fury.”
March 5, 2025
Beautifully written essays that stack an entire life next to itself.
It weaves ancestral trauma, diaspora, the grit of NYC, poverty, familial love and disownment alongside memory and learning how to love+ live with the memories and history of all that came before.
Also, stealing in all it’s obvious and not so obvious forms.
It weaves ancestral trauma, diaspora, the grit of NYC, poverty, familial love and disownment alongside memory and learning how to love+ live with the memories and history of all that came before.
Also, stealing in all it’s obvious and not so obvious forms.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews