Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx are a memoir written by an American actress, screenwriter and author Sonia Manzano, and published in 2015. Manzano is best known for her role as Maria on the iconic show Sesame Street, hence the name of the book. The memoir is the account of the author’s formative years in a problematic household of Puerto Rican migrants. Events of the book take place in New York City in the 1950s and the 1960s, and the setting is as important as it can be for a memoir’s events. Becoming Maria is a story that is defined by trials and tribulations Manzano had to overcome on her way to the dream, and many of those were related to this story’s time and place.
The protagonist presents her audience with the image of impoverished and crowded homes and neighborhoods that were the only places immigrants could afford to live at the time. Manzano grows up alongside her father, who is an alcoholic and an abuser, mother, siblings, and a group of noisy extended family and friends (25). Some of her memories the author recalls with humor and warmth. However, many of them disclose the grim reality of living in poverty and experiencing domestic violence. As Manzano comes of age, she learns to take pride in her Puerto Rican descent and realizes she deserves better by witnessing the American civil rights and women’s rights movements of the 1960s (Manzano 222, 230). Having come down this difficult path with the author, the reader feels joy when Manzano’s first victories come, the biggest of which is her life-changing audition for Sesame Street. The setting impacts the author because it impacts her life and makes her the person she is today. Manzano fought hard to find her own way as a Nuyorican born in the 1950s – and she did.
Work Cited
Manzano, Sonia. Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx. Scholastic Incorporated, 2015.