My rebel mother

Throughout my childhood, my mother was constantly scribbling in her diary. When she died suddenly in early December 2004, less than a month after her 71st birthday, I discovered boxes of her old diaries in storage, on notepads of all shapes and sizes, some of them in Spanish, dating back to our early years on the run together across state lines and borders. Reading through these dusty diaries, however awkward and sometimes painful, was my way of keeping my mother alive, hearing her voice again as I read each passage, reliving my rollercoaster childhood by her side. It was also my way of trying to make sense of a childhood growing up with a mother who was both