Review: "Motherland" by Paula Ramón

Motherland by Paula Ramón
Translated by Julia Sanches and Jennifer Shyue
Published October 2023 via Amazon Crossing
★★★★

By the time I turned twelve, I had lived through as many coups as presidential elections. (loc. 60*)

Venezuela was a home Ramón never wanted to leave. It was her mother's motherland, and her own; it was also her father's refuge after WWII and the Spanish Civil War. And when Ramón was a child, it was still a land of promise and wealth. But over time, through incredible amounts of political mismanagement, that promise turned to dust, and opportunities—and bare necessities—became scarcer and scarcer. Ramón left, more by chance than by choice, but not before living through the beginning of her country's spiral downwards.

To this day, I still have trouble figuring out what was normal and what wasn't. Venezuela was falling to pieces by the minute, but I had no points of reference. I had learned how to be a journalist in Venezuela during the revolution. (loc. 1271)

Motherland tells of Venezuela's fall from stability through the lens of Ramón's family, who in turn went from relative comfort and stability to struggling to find jobs and food and medicine. I read this in large part because, every time I've seen Venezuela in the news in recent years, it's been bad news, and...I wanted to understand better. Like Ramón's mother—who went from being able to buy a house with her pension to being unable to afford dinner on the same amount of money—I struggle to grasp the realities of the hyperinflation that Venezuela experienced; like Ramón, I understand that there's a point at which none of that matters because the thing that matters is your parent's wellbeing.

I'd stopped doing the math. I didn't know what was cheap or expensive anymore. I just wanted one thing, for my mother to have food in the fridge and staples in the pantry. Though it may seem boring to talk only about groceries, that's the situation we were in. (loc. 2148)

I'm reminded a little of The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers, who grew up in Zimbabwe and later chronicled the political and economic turmoil that beset the country. There's both more and less of a political narrative here—at some point, I think, the politics of it all just stop mattering, because what matters is that houses are no longer safe without multiple security doors, and medication has to be shipped into the country hidden in hollowed-out books, and only the elite can afford to buy food—or can find food to buy in the first place. The story gets a little bit repetitive, not through any fault of the author but because it's hard to find new ways to describe a situation that keeps getting worse in the same ways. It also provides so much fascinating context and history, though, and (how to put this?) while I'd rather the book not be necessary, I'm delighted to see a personal take on the matter.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.