Description:

According to her colorful Mami Dearest, the life of young Gigi Anders will be simple if she can remember three maxims—be pretty, get married, and always drink TaB. Thus begins her instruction in the art of being a lady and the side effects of falling in love.

As the granddaughter of Eastern European and Russian shtetl-reared grandparents who immigrated as teenagers in the early 1920s to the fierce tropical beauty of Cuba, Anders is heir apparent to a legacy of transatlantic alienation. With dazzling wit and hilarity mined from the depths of loss and yearning, Anders chronicles her journey from beach baby to ostracized exile to vibrant intellectual, along the way balancing her obsession with killer outfits and zaftig, orgasmic meals—always with a can of TaB!—with the more serious pursuits of love, sanity, and lipstick in perfect siren red.

From Publishers Weekly

Castro's regime began in 1959, and Anders's family fled a year later, arriving in Maryland when Anders was a toddler. At this memoir's heart is Anders's relationship with her mother, Mami, whom the author alternately worships and scorns (leading to decades of therapy for Anders as an adult). Mami prepared Anders early for the life she should have: that of pampered wife. Standing over her infant's crib, Mami murmured, " 'Tafetán color champán.' " Anders writes, "It took about a year of hearing this bizarre mantra over and over before I was old enough to finally understand what... my mother was talking about: the color and fabric of my wedding dress." Mami is a complex woman who does puzzling things, like bringing four-year-old Anders to her job at a mental hospital every day because she doesn't believe in summer camp. But Anders doesn't sufficiently explain Mami's reasonings, and much of what she complains about is average adolescent angst. When Anders does find herself in serious situations, she resorts to humor, keeping the tone so light, readers are kept at a distance. If only this memoir had the frothy richness of the café con leches Anders so loves.
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From Booklist

Starred Review Oy veh and ay caramba! What an upbringing Washington Post writer Anders had! Writing in a unique voice that captures the distinctiveness of both her Jewish and Cuban heritages, Anders becomes a sort of Alice in Wonderland, leading readers through a looking-glass life, before and after her parents were forced from Cuba in the wake of Castro's revolution. Anders remembers a princess-perfect world in Havana, where her Jewish grandparents had immigrated in the 1920s and made their fortunes. Then, in a poignantly funny scene, the clan must leave with almost nothing. The guards even demand Anders surrender her red tricycle, but she fights them off with a signature willpower that becomes more evident as the story proceeds. Handled equally well are her Cuban Jewish, fish-out-of-water stories, culminating at her eastern private school, Sidwell Friends, or as she calls it, Frenzy. There's only one character more fascinating than Anders, and that's her gorgeous, redheaded, red-fingernailed, potty-mouthed ("Fohk!") Mami. And Mami's unquenchable charisma is the ongoing problem in the relationship between mother and daughter. Gigi is always playing catch-up with a mother who doesn't even know there's a competition on. Often laugh-out-loud funny, with lots of Spanglish dialogue and priceless cross-cultural moments, this is more than a read; it's an experience. Ilene Cooper
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