Review by Booklist Review
In 2016, Vasquez-Lavado earned the distinction of becoming the first Peruvian woman to stand atop Mount Everest and, in 2018, the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits--the highest mountains on seven continents. A gifted writer, Vasquez-Lavado immediately draws readers into the account of her Everest expedition, but this is not a typical mountaineering tale focusing on harrowing hardships while ascending the infamous summit. Her intimate debut memoir also chronicles another kind of survival journey, one that includes years of sexual abuse by a family friend in Lima and her eventual escape to the U.S., thanks to a college scholarship. For years, Vasquez-Lavado attempted to balance climbing her career ladder against a self-destructive path of alcohol abuse. Confronting her trauma, which she describes as a battle that "locks you into a Groundhog Day of your own interior," she shares life-altering lessons as she reclaims her power. Along the way, she founded Courageous Girls, a nonprofit venture designed to empower survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking, and led several young survivors on a trek to base camp Mount Everest, an empowering experience for all involved. This inspirational memoir about navigating trauma, healing relationships, finding community, and achieving self-acceptance delivers a raw and riveting reading experience. Selena Gomez will play the author in a forthcoming movie.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
As an adult dealing with the trauma of childhood sexual abuse, Vasquez-Lavado looks to the mountains for healing in her triumphant debut memoir. She recounts a trek guiding a group of abuse survivors on a mountain-climbing expedition, finding catharsis together as they share their stories, and immediately afterward setting out to climb Everest. Interspersed with the account of her ascent, chapters cover growing up in an emotionally fraught family in Lima, Peru; being sexually abused for years by a family friend; coming to the U.S. for college; scaling the corporate ladder in Silicon Valley while secretly exploring San Francisco's queer scene; struggling with alcohol abuse and heartbreak; and finally beginning to confront her buried traumas. Vasquez-Lavado recasts mountaineering, contrary to its macho reputation, as a feminist act: "Everest has many names, but they all mean mother. Sagarmatha--Mother of the Sky; Chomolungma--Mother of the World, stands witness where our own mothers could not." She concludes, "We do not conquer Everest, just like we do not conquer trauma" but must yield to the "chasms" it opens to cross. Vasquez-Lavado's story of struggle and survival is elevated by its faith in the power of women's solidarity. Fans of Cheryl Strayed's Wild should take note. Agent: Lara Love, Idea Architects. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Journalist Cheung relates growing up in Hong Kong-- The Impossible City--after its 1917 reunification with China, traversing its rich identities while exploring her education at various English-speaking international schools, the city's literary and indie music scenes, and the protests against restricted freedoms. One of America's top pianists, MacArthur fellow Denk recounts his upbringing and training, clarifying the complexities of the artistic life and the student-teacher relationship in Every Good Boy Does Fine. As Drayton relates in Black American Refugee, she left Trinidad and Tobago as a youngster to join her mother in the United States but was angered by the contrast in how white and Black people were treated and by age 20 returned to Tobago, where she could enjoy being Black without fear. What My Bones Know reveals Emmy Award-winning radio producer Foo's relentless panic attacks until she was finally diagnosed with Complex PTSD, a condition resulting from ongoing trauma--in her case the years she spent abused by her parents before they abandoned her. Growing up fourth-generation Japanese American in Los Angeles directly after World War II, Pulitzer finalist poet Hongo recounts spending his life hunting for The Perfect Sound, from his father's inspired record-player setup and the music his Black friends enjoyed to Bach, Coltrane, ukulele, and the best possible vacuum tubes. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism and a National Book Critics Circle Award for Negroland, Jefferson offers what she calls a temperamental autobiography with Constructing a Nervous System, woven of fragments like the sound of a 1950s jazz LP and a ballerina's movements spliced with those of an Olympic runner to explore the possibilities of the female body. In Home/Land, New Yorker staffer Mead captures the excitement, dread, and questions of identity that surfaced after she relocated from New York to her birth city, London, with her family in 2018. Vasquez-Lavado now lives In the Shadow of the Mountain, but once she was a Silicon Valley star wrestling with deep-seated personal problems (e.g., childhood abuse, having to deny her sexuality to her family) when she decided to turn around her life through mountain climbing; eventually, she took a team of young women survivors up Mount Everest (150,000-copy first printing).
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Peruvian-born mountaineer and humanitarian tells the story of how mountain-climbing helped her and a group of young sexual abuse survivors process old traumas. Vasquez-Lavado's childhood was a nightmare of dysfunction. Her mother suffered in willful silence whenever her husband beat her. In the meantime, the author quietly endured sexual abuse from the family's male housecleaner. College in the U.S. brought awareness of both the fear that had ruled her life and reckoning with her own homosexuality. Only after she moved to San Francisco did Vasquez-Lavado begin to embrace her sexuality and the boozy, self-obliterating lifestyle of a hard-driving professional. A profound fear of intimacy led to a seemingly endless string of one-night-stands and, later, to the destruction of her one meaningful relationship. The author won her lover back only to have professional ambition and a newfound desire to climb the world's mountains come between her and her partner, who eventually committed suicide. Her mother's death from cancer and her own divorce drove her to summit Argentina's Acongagua, "the tallest mountain in all of the Americas," and made her realize that her true calling was to help sexual abuse survivors like herself. Vasquez-Lavado created a nonprofit for young female survivors of sexual abuse and took a group of girls to the Mount Everest base camp, hoping that climbing and sisterhood could help them overcome their demons. She then transformed her sometimes-harrowing journey to the summit into a personal symbol for conquering the fears and shadows that had ruled her life. Complex and compelling, Vasquez-Lavado's quest to heal herself from the deep wounds of patriarchy is also a vibrantly feminist celebration of female resilience. "Reaching the top isn't about the accomplishment," she writes at the end. "It's about walking in the shadows long enough to see the other side, about learning how to roll with other women and men, and how to lean on and support others instead of white-knuckling life alone." An emotionally raw and courageous memoir. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
