Monday, January 26, 2026

Cry for Me, Argentina: My Life as a Failed Child Star

Written by: Tamara Yajia

First line: I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Why you should read this book: This is the type of wickedly funny writing where you feel bad that you can't stop laughing about the insane, unsavory, and sometimes abusive events of the author's recollections, but you still can't stop laughing at them. Young Yajia gets a taste of the spotlight after her wildly successful debut stripping in front of her religious school to Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and pursues it with a passion, almost tasting stardom, until her parents abruptly yank her away from her goals to live in America. She is honest about her family's foibles, her own failures, her sexuality, her struggle with addiction, and a hundred other weird personal details (like the time a cop accused her of soliciting but she countered that the gentleman fingering her in a parked car was, in fact, her own cousin, and then she paid the cop to leave her alone; or all the times her whole family--three generations, led by her grandmother--drove around the red light district to admire how beautiful all the sex workers were) that seem too crazy to be true, but they're marketing this book as a nonfiction memoir so....

Why you should read this book: If you are easily offended, especially by sex, and very particularly if you were easily offended by the end of the film Little Miss Sunshine, definitely this is not the book for you. 

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