Mirta told me, “As a child, growing up away from my extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, I had a mish-mash of rituals and traditions in my brain. Guided by her extended Argentina and US family, Mirta becomes fiercely patriotic and simultaneously pulled to Argentina. Where does she belong? Who is she? Her identity struggles are internal and historical: she is multicultural and yet cannot be compartmentalized.

When her father begins working for Pan Am, Mirta frequently travels back and forth between the Argentina family and her US home. Mirta’s journey becomes literary when she writes With Love, The Argentina Family. Not only were we immigrants, but we didn’t quite fit the mold.

I was acutely aware of how different we seemed to be from others. “Here at home, I struggled to find myself within the American tapestry. Teachers couldn’t pronounce her name and students couldn’t figure out what group she belonged to.

Mirta Innes Trupp searches for family history and her identity in her memoir, With Love, The Argentina Family and in her historical fiction, Becoming Malka, works that she describes as the story of a Russian, Argentinian, American and Jewish immigrant. With Love, The Argentina Family Becoming Malka Mirta Ines Trupp 0 Foodie Lit: A genre of novel and memoirs filled with food stories and recipesĮach month, I’ll share the magic of a good Foodie Lit read and one of its recipes.Ĭooking and recipes in novels or memoirs take us into the mind of the character or narrator and brings us into the book’s kitchen to see, smell and share the lives within.

Becoming Malka by Mirta Ines Trupp