Queen of Corona - Esterhazy

5 Stars!!

ABOUT THE BOOK -
Roza Esterhazy is a mixed-up kid. Eighteen years old and on the threshold of adulthood, she feels powerless in the face of a world that hasn’t adequately prepared her for adult life. She is riddled with anxiety about the world’s problems, the problems of her classmates at an inner-city high school in Corona, Queens. As an American of multicultural heritage (Polish-Jewish on her mother’s side, Venezuelan on her father’s) she struggles to find her place in society where the odds are stacked against people like her.

At the outset, she is on an airplane heading to Warsaw – the city of her ancestors, a city she’d never been to before. The city her mother had fled from in the 1980s because of an article she’d written that had offended the authorities. Roza’s voyage is a kind of reverse immigration – she’s escaping from America back to Poland because of a student protest that ended in tragedy. She alludes to the protest and its bloody end throughout the novel, with flashbacks tormenting her traumatized mind to the very end. When she arrives in Warsaw, she struggles to come to terms with what happened and what part she played in the tragedy. She grapples with the concept of guilt and blame – were the students to blame for what happened or was it the fault of overzealous police? She weighs how fear quells courage in an oppressive society. She confronts the grey reality of post-war Warsaw and realizes that there’s very little of it that she can identify with. She retraces history’s steps through the Polish capital and the former ghetto of WW2.

Her longing for home is visceral, reflected in the flashbacks of school and relationships that are woven through her daily existence. Flashbacks that reflect the absurdity of the inner-city high school experience, where kids are meant to learn an inimical thread of history that has little to do with their own reality, that places many of them in the position of the conquered and exploited.

Queen of Corona is a look into the inner life of the inner city. A foray into the mind and heart of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, torn from her destiny because she dared to stand up and speak up for those who don't have a voice. A glimpse inside the hopeless hallways of New York City's failing public schools. It is a coming-of-age novel in a tumultuous time. It is a lesson on how fear is the most dangerous aspect of our Trumped-up existence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Esterhazy is a journalist, writer and translator. A native New Yorker, she holds degrees in Comparative Literature from New York University and American Studies from the University of Warsaw. Queen of Corona is her debut novel.

Visit her website - HERE


MY THOUGHTS -
I came away wondering if this was really fiction or part Bio?? Either way - it was brilliant! I love these kinds of books that are so gritty, raw, and honest.  This story hit me like a ton of bricks. It got mixed reviews but I think you have to be able to relate to  "get it". Have you ever been poor, struggling, just trying to get a break any way you can? I've been there - I get it!  I appreciate the gut retching honesty of this book (fiction or not). There is a lot of swearing but I get that too! When I was in high school and in a bad place I did a lot of swearing too.

Besides the story, which was fantastic - There were so many quotable lines in this book! I was highlighting almost every other page.
Here are just a few -

"Our faith that people are more normal than weird is stronger than our fear. I guess we use our intuition more than we think."

"Our family sacrificed everything for their city. Like so many families. And still it fell to pieces. The family and the city, too. After the war, it was battered all over again by the Soviets and then came the blood-sucking blows of communism right after that. So, if you managed not to get popped in the skull by a nazi (would you capitalize nazi? I sure wouldn’t, so I won’t) the commies were waiting for you just a bit further down the road. Then came Solidarity (with a capital S for sure) and a rebirth as painful as destruction.”

And here is my favorite -
"My parents have always impressed on me the importance of communicating in a natural and straightforward manner. There’s no point in rebelling against language if you can use it to fight for what you believe in.” - Wow! If only everyone thought that way!

If you are looking for something real, not a fluffy fairytale - this is definitely the one you should read this year! I think this will be one of my favorites!

I voluntarily posted this review after receiving a copy of this book from Xpresso Book Tours -  Thank You!!

ORDER your copy from Amazon - HERE

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