Not for Everyday Use: A Memoir

By Elizabeth Nunez

Nunez's novels have all received glowing New York Times reviews.

Known for her novels, this is Nunez's first memoir.

Special focus on LIBRARIES, who have been supportive of Nunez's novels.

In addition to tackling the issues of immigration and dislocation, this memoir also addresses the matter of coping with the death of one's parents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Akashic Books
• Release date: Mar 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781617752780

Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez is the award-winning author of eight novels. Both Boundaries and Anna In-Between were New York Times Editors' Choices and Anna In-Between won the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award and the 2011 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and Barnes & Noble. Nunez also received a NALIS Lifetime Literary Award from the Trinidad & Tobago National Library. She is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches fiction writing.

Reviews for Not for Everyday Use

[glendalea_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Elizabeth Nunez does have a gift for lyrical writing, which makes this memoir pleasant to read. The love for her parents is evident, and I found the historical references interesting. However, there was something I couldn't quite place that made this book an okay read rather than a great one, perhaps because I felt "disconnected" from the author at times.

[caalynch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the third book I have read by Nunez. This memoir was very touching and engaging which made it a quick read. I actually closed the book wanting to learn more about Nunez' parents' story (how they met, what were their perspectives on the ups and downs in their marriage, how they were able to have a 60th anniversary, etc). As this was an Advance Copy, the book needs a bit more editing as some details were very repetitive throughout, which made it somewhat distracting for me; just some finetuning.

[yukon92 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book started out very promising. However, it really bothered me that the author continuously kept "hawking" her previous books. It seemed more like she wrote this book so she could mention her other publications. Even when talking about the fact that her mother read most of the books the author wrote, she constantly mentioned the titles of those books. Enough of that!!! If I am interested in reading the other books I will look them up, not much of a problem nowadays!

[bkswrites_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Elizabeth Nunez's recollection opens with a phone ringing, but it's the middle of the next page before she even looks at the caller ID. She spends that time telling us about the novel she's proofreading. It draws on her mother's life, and especially the breast cancer that was killing her. But she assures us "my mother lives. Her cancer may have reached the terminal stage, but it was not terminal." I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but it does set the tone for the book, which puts Nunez and her writing, and her insecurities and resentments, at the forefront, and her mother as mostly a secondary character in her own life.At first I assumed this opening chapter must be a prologue, even though it is numbered simply "1," and that eight pages later, under "2," we would be transported back to Nunez's childhood in Trinidad, or perhaps her mother's early life. But no, by the fifth page of the chapter, we are given a simple list of the children, two from Waldo's first marriage, followed by nine live births and, if I recall correctly, three miscarriages. I'm afraid I was so swamped with details that I lost interest in them. The constancy of Una Nunez's pregnancy is significant, first because the heart of this chapter is a complaint about how the Roman Catholic church bullied her to forgo birth control and put her children through abuse and guilt over failed marriages. Elizabeth tells us, too, how hard it was on her, Una's eldest biological child, to have her mother always pregnant, but I'm afraid she's already lost my sympathy.Neither is there a real story here about the observance of Una's death. The book contains three chapters, a total of nine pages, that are exclusively about how the family handles the death. The first one, just two pages, is followed by an 18-page chapter that's almost entirely about Elizabeth's own life outside of Trinidad, as writer, teacher, and mother. It includes an actual historical footnote, the only one in the book.Maybe I misunderstood. I probably should have noticed that the words "A Memoir" appear on the cover of this book with the writer's name, not as a subtitle. I was really looking forward to learning something about Trinidad, its culture and history, and maybe its flora and fauna. There are tantalizing tidbits scattered through here, but they're hard to find and harder to put into any organized picture.Maybe if I did know the writer better I would be more interested in how her novels fit into her memories and her relationship with her mother. But I don't know her novels, and there's little here, in content or presentation, to make me want to read them. The memoir also contains repetitive language and teeth-on-edge grammatical errors that tear me out of the world of any book.* Anyway, if I could remember which parts of which novels are based on what real situations, I would be distracted by them. I think I'll settle for knowing only the writer, and only this far. 
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* While I read a volume marked by a stick-on label as an "advance reading copy" and not for sale, the book was released before I received the review copy, and the ARC did not carry the customary request not to quote without seeing a fully edited copy. Anyway, I can't imagine who besides the writer could have committed these errors in the first place.

[minacee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first book I have read from Nunez even though she has a eight novels on the market. After reading her memoir I can't say I'm anxious to read her previous works but that is not because this memoir is bad or poorly-written. Some of the themes Nunez writes about don't really speak to me but this was still a fast read. I remained interested until the end.Nunez, a professor of English, explores several aspects of her life and her relationships (along with the lives of her parents) after she returns to her childhood home of Trinidad for her mother's funeral. Nunez writes with a wistful and curious tone. She manages to weave in snippets of history, literature, and religion in what is already a jam-packed story without cluttering it one bit.

[streamsong_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Caribbean American author Elizabeth Munez was living and teaching in New York when she got that dreaded telephone call that her mother in Trinidad had had a stroke and was seriously ill.She arrived home to find that her mother had passed and her father was slipping away into dementia. This brought forth this beautiful episodic memoir of growing up in Trinidad.Along with everyday events she deftly reveals the evils of colonialism (her father was the first non-white government minister), racism, classism, and a wonderful splash of Caribbean history as well as glimpses into her life in the United States.Two bits especially will stay with me:In one very memorable scene, she relates this striking story. There were almost no Caribbean authors as she was growing up, especially not Caribbean children's authors. Since the infrastructure was British with British officials, British church leaders, and British teachers, the books she read were mostly British and her favorites were by Enid Blyton. So her family went to the beach one day to have a picnic and Elizabeth was disappointed to the point of tears. She had learned from Ms. Blyton that it 'was not a real picnic' without taking a wooly jumper and eating apples or pears. None of these items were available on Trinidad and Elizabeth was heartbroken that her family's picnic was not real – not good enough. I also was very intrigued to learn that the Trinidadians who enlisted to fight in WWII, did not go to avenge the white Europeans, but the slaughter of 1.5 million Ethiopians by Mussolini. I do not remember learning about this slaughter in school - and after a bit of internet searching, now I am dumbfounded by it.I love memoirs by women and this is one of the best I have read this year. Highly recommended.

[vasquirrel · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

An okay, but not overly interesting, look at a daughter returning to the country of her birth for her mother's funeral. I felt like some of the same ground was covered over and over again throughout the book -- starting to sound repetitive. I put it down several times and had to remind myself to finish it -- not the sign of a great read, for me.

[sdunford_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I utterly devoured this book. I absolutely loved it. But as I sit to write I'm having trouble deciding if its because the book is beautifully written (which it is) or because of the uncanny number of parallels between the family she so lovingly and carefully describes and my own. I'm a white 12th generation American, and Elizabeth Nunez is new immigrant and a Woman of Color, but we were both raised in large Catholic families. Both our mother's were undemonstrative (my mother tensed up when she was hugged). We were expected to succeed, and to become independent. And both of us left those families at a young age, and both ended up in the outer boroughs of NYC. That's where the parallels end. But while Elizabeth's journey to dealing with the realities and complexities of such a background are very different than mine, they are told with such clarity and love that I felt like I was connecting with someone I've always known.This is the first book by Elizabeth Nunez that I've read, so my task over the next few weeks is to go find and read her others.Bravo, Elizabeth Nunez.

[captainallison · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was fascinated by this book from the very first paragraph. Elizabeth Nunez has written more than just a memoir. While telling the reader about her Trinidadian upbringing, she also examines the class structures, religious influences, and historical backgrounds that she believes played a role in shaping her family, her parents, and therefore her own life. Ultimately, the book is about the sometimes complicated love between a daughter who immigrated to the U.S. at a young age and the mother who stayed behind in Trinidad, but there is so much more within these pages.

[bibliophileofalls · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although I would have rated this book with 3 stars through the first 3/4 of it, I changed my rating to 4 stars in the last quarter because the author finally discovers some important insights regarding her family, mostly her parents and their relationship. Most of her life, the author feels an emotional detachment to her mother but finally sees the truth of the matter, even though she must be in her 60s by the time she realizes the truth. A very good book that I'd recommend.