When Melissa Hart’s mother left her father to live with another woman in the 1970s, the custody decision was no surprise for the times—lesbians would not be allowed to raise three young children. Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood is Hart’s account of her life after her forced separation from her mother and through her formative years into college.

The disparity between every-other-weekend days spent with her mother in a small home in a Southern California Latino neighborhood and the rest of her life spent in her father and stepmother’s middle-class home is stark. At first too young to understand anything but her own desire to spend more time with her mother, Hart grows into a teenager embarrassed by her mother’s living situation.

She questions her own sexuality, and she struggles to find a cultural identity in school. Dark-skinned students seem to have the most interesting lives, and Hart’s white skin is often the fodder for comments and jokes. She yearns for the ethnic food her classmates bring for lunch and for the cultural background that goes with it.

Each chapter of Gringa almost stands on its own as a snapshot of a different experience or a different time in Hart’s childhood. Taken together, the chapters form a fascinating account that shows not only Hart’s personal family experience, but the times she grew up in as well. As a child of the 70s myself, I recognized references to popular television shows and music, and I found it interesting to compare what was happening in my life at the same time.

Whimsical recipes close out each chapter. The recipes not only relate to food featured in the narrative, but also to the emotions that went along with the events of the food. For instance, for a chapter titled, “Ethiopia,” in which one of Hart’s classmates tells Ethiopian jokes (remember those?), the recipe is for White Girl Cookies. During the chapter Hart tells how bringing white cookies to an event ended up as part of a joke about her white skin. Her preparations for the event and her emotions about once again having her skin tone stand out are as much a part of the recipe as the ingredients. It’s an interesting technique that livens up both the narrative and the recipes.

At times Gringa is funny, contemplative and sad, although it doesn’t rely on emotion to carry the story along. Hart is not afraid to highlight her own flaws, her own anger and confusion, and her own role in some of the events that frustrate her as she grows. As I read it, I felt that Hart could have been any girl who sat next to me in school, quietly concealing a turbulent home life while appearing to be sure of who she was.

Although part of me longed for more details about Hart’s life with her father, her stepmother and her mother, I also recognized that having that detail would not have helped me to understand Hart’s experience. All in all, I feel I got just enough of what she was feeling to help me see the root of her choices. Recently I heard Hart give a speech in which she advised that memoirist write about various pieces of their lives and weave those pieces together to form a complete narrative. Gringa is a testament that her advice is sound.

Find out more about, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood and Melissa Hart.

Stay tuned this month for a guest post from, talented memoirist Melissa Hart, author of “Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood”. And on Saturday, our own Rebecca Laffar-Smith interviews Melissa about the value of relationships in writing and how family played a significant role in her memoir. Subscribe right now so you won’t miss out.