Mexican Hooker 1 ─ And My Other Roles Since the Revolution

Carmen Aguirre has lived many lives, all of them to the full. At age six she was a Chilean refugee adjusting to life as a Latina in North America. At eighteen she was a revolutionary dissident married to a generous-hearted man she couldn't fully love. In her early twenties she fought to find her voice as an actress and to break away from the stereotypical roles thrust upon her--Housekeeper, Hotel Maid, Mexican Hooker #1--all the while navigating the complex paths of lust and heartbreak. As she grew in her career, Aguirre became a writer, a director, an actress, and then a mother, but alongside her many multi-faceted identities was another that was unbearable to embrace yet impossible to escape; that of the thirteen-year-old girl attacked by one of Canada's most feared rapists. Thirty-three years after the assault, Aguirre decided it was time to meet the man who changed her life.
Fierce, funny and enlightening, Aguirre interweaves her account of overcoming the attack that shook her world with a host of stories of life and love. From her passionate but explosive relationship with a gorgeous Argentinian basketball player to the all-consuming days at drama school in Vancouver; from the end of the Chilean revolutionary dream to life among the Chicano theatre scene of Los Angeles; from the child who was made the victim of a terrible crime to the artist who found the courage to confront her assailant, Aguirre tells a story of strength and survival that will leave you speechless.

CARMEN AGUIRRE is a Vancouver-based writer and theatre artist who has worked extensively in North and South America. She has written or co-written twenty plays, includingThe Refugee Hotel, which was nominated for a 2010 Dora Mavor Moore Award for best new play. Her most recent one-woman show isBlue Box. Aguirre has sixty film, TV and stage acting credits, including lead roles in the Showcase seriesEndgame and Quinceanera, winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.Something Fierce won Canada Reads in 2012, was a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize, and was a #1 national bestseller. The author lives in Vancouver, BC.