Free Handbook For An Unpredictable Life: Book Review Book Review Example

Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) is the story of broadway and film star Rosie Perez’s tumultuous and turbulent childhood. As a very young child, Rosie was placed in a Catholic home for children in the heart of New York City where she and numerous other children suffered unspeakable abuse at the hands of the nuns. Amazingly, Perez was able to turn the abuse she suffered into fuel and determination to drive her wildly successful dance and theatre career. Perez broke boundaries for Latinas in the entertainment industry, appearing in mainstream movie roles previously reserved for white actresses. Perez was one of the pioneering influential figures who helped to pave the way for the successful Latina actresses we see today such as, Eva Longoria and Sofia Vergara. After making her way in the LA hip hop scene, Rosie continued to star in award winning Hollywood films, and was eventually nominated for an Academy Award. Today, Perez can be seen on TV as one of the hosts on the hit ABC talk show, The View. Perez’s story is an important one for all young people to read as it highlights the fact that you can make what ever you want out of a hard situation if you are willing to put in the hard work required. Young people who read this novel should also take to heart the way that Rosie refused to accept her circumstances and instead used this to inspire her to make a better life for herself.
I believe that a large part of Rosie Perez’s identity formation process came through identity achievement. Identity achievement is the process by which adolescents make strong commitment to a set of morals, standards, and beliefs that they discover through stages of active exploration. This is exactly what Perez talks about in her book. Rosie’s abusive upbringing lead her to believe that a person needs to be tough to survive and to make it in life, which explains her extreme sense of determination and drive. Although Rosie’s phase of active exploration was much different from most adolescents in America, finding a strategy by which to cope with the nun’s and her foster families, served to help Rosie to develop her personal beliefs and morals that she would carry with her for the rest of her career and life.
I think oppression played a large role in Perez’s upbringing and early life. Being a Latina child, Rosie was subjected to even more harsh treatment than was brought upon her white foster siblings. Systems of oppression try to focus its victims to make themselves small so they are forced to blend into the general population and not be seen. This harmful point of view was pushed upon Rosie from the time she was very young, causing her to fighting back and to never allow herself to be invisible. Being a member of an oppressed population also meant that Rosie was forced to work twice as hard as her peers in order to gain a fraction of the recognition that they afforded themselves. This frustrating fact also would have played a role in Rosie developing her warrior’s spirit and fierce work ethic.
If Perez had grown up as my sibling in my living environment, her upbringing would have been dramatically different from what she had experienced with the nuns in New York City. Growing up in a midsized, predominately white middle class town, Rosie would have had access to many more economic opportunities than she had with the nuns. Rosie would also have had access to excellent educational opportunities and had parents who would have stopped at nothing to let her realize her dreams, no matter what those might be. Despite all the positives Rosie would have experienced growing up in my family, I believe she still would have experienced some degree of discrimination, being a Latina growing up in a white community. While the level of discrimination Rosie would have been drastically lower than what she experienced with the nuns, this still would have played a key part in developing her personality. I suspect that Rosie still would have developed a fighter’s spirit had she not been exposed to so many unfortunate circumstances early on in life. This spirit would have instead been developed through hard work, rather than through a need to survive.