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First Gen

A Memoir

Contributors

By Alejandra Campoverdi

Formats and Prices

Price

$29.00

Price

$38.00 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 12, 2023. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

*2X NATIONAL BESTSELLER*
Winner of the Martin Cruz Smith Award (CALIBA)
Winner of the Dolores Huerta Award (International Latino Book Awards)
2024 Council for Opportunity in Education National Book Club Selection
Longlisted for the Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award for First Year Experience


An unflinching memoir and “invaluable resource” (Kirkus) about navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina—offering both a riveting personal story and an examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer. 

Alejandra Campoverdi has been a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, a gang member’s girlfriend, and a candidate for U.S. Congress. She’s ridden on Air Force One and in G-rides. She’s been featured in Maxim magazine and had a double mastectomy. Living a life of contradictory extremes often comes with the territory when you’re a “First and Only.” It also comes at a price.   

With candor and heart, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles. Foregoing the tidy bullet points of her resume and instead shining a light on the spaces between them, what emerges is a powerful testimony that shatters the one-dimensional glossy narrative we are often sold of what it takes to achieve the American Dream. In this timely and revealing reflection, Alejandra draws from her own experiences to name and frame the challenges First and Onlys often face, illuminating a road to truth, healing, and change in the process.   

Part memoir, part manifesto, FIRST GEN is a story of generational inheritance, aspiration, and the true meaning of belonging—a gripping journey to “reclaim the parts of ourselves we sacrificed in order to survive.”  

 

  • FIRST GEN is a gift to all of us--the children of immigrants who have longed to read a story like ours in books. With vulnerability and transparency, Campoverdi gives us special access to so many setbacks, triumphs, and hard-won lessons as a First and Only. Every Latina hoping to end cycles of generational trauma must read this immediately.” 
     
    Erika L. Sanchez, New York Times bestselling author of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
  • “FIRST GEN is a luminous achievement, one of the most moving debuts in memory… Campoverdi transforms the furies, hypocrisies and disappointments of the American dream into a survivor’s song of surpassing poignancy… this is literary love medicine, a book you will not soon forget.”
    Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of New York Times bestsellers The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This is How You Lose Her
  • "Intimate and unflinching, First Gen reveals the very real human and emotional costs to living the "American Dream." Alejandra Campoverdi shines a guiding light for fellow "First and Onlys" who struggle to overcome systemic barriers while detangling generational trauma. No discussion of America's supposed meritocracy is complete without consideration of this powerful book."
     
    Qian Julie Wang, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Country: A Memoir of An Undocumented Childhood

On Sale
Sep 12, 2023
Page Count
288 pages
ISBN-13
9781538757185