Travels Through Aqua, Green, and Blue: A Memoir by Mary E. Gregory – Review by Sherry Sharpnack

Travels Through Aqua, Green, and Blue: A MemoirTravels Through Aqua, Green, and Blue: A Memoir by Mary E. Gregory
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a memoir by Mary Gregory about life w/ a mentally ill mother while suffering from a facial deformity. What.A.Combination.
Mary’s mother leaves her husband b/c the husband, a pastor, comes out as gay. She moves the family around, eventually cross-country to California. Mom has mental issues, but the three kids don’t know that, nor understand. They just know they spend a lot of time in the car, eating fast food or from convenience stores/gas stations. Mary is ugly b/c of her cleft lip, and has problems w/ eating b/c of the holes in her mouth from her cleft palate. I deeply felt all her problems in school with classmates.
It’s understandable that when the family finally lands in Long Beach, CA, Mary eventually ends up as a drug addict and exploring a different lifestyle. This makes me sad, b/c for a while, she was really into basketball, fitness, and school, but slid away from that. The eldest, Paul, leaves the family as soon as possible. Sam, the elder daughter and middle child, bonds w/ an undocumented immigrant boyfriend and spends years getting him back to California from Mexico. This leaves Mary to fend for herself, and for her mother. Mary’s mother gets fatter and fatter, and less and less able to manage her own life, much less raise children. Reading the descriptions of the mother’s various domiciles left me nauseous.
Mary eventually falls for a guy eleven years older than her, another immigrant who needs her to marry him for a green card. It is surprising that this works out at all, but it does. The reader roots HARD for Mary to find love and stability outside of her nuclear family unit. After Mary meets Pierre, it feels like the memoir speeds up, far more superficial than the parts about her young childhood.
The whole book reminds me of Tara Westover’s “Educated,” without the Mormon background, and w/ an overtly schizophrenic parent. I was SO pleased to read about Mary finally getting surgeries to fix her deformities!
I will round up to four stars for this nearly stream-of-consciousness salute to a girl who survived to find a better life.

View all my reviews

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *