Tell Mother I'm in Paradise

“Deeply self-reflective and powerfully narrated, [Gasteazoro’s] memoir Tell Mother I’m in Paradise offers a complex portrait of a woman who transgressed multiple social worlds. Gasteazoro intimately describes how ordinary Salvadorans survived state terror and organized revolution. The memoir is a gem of a source that will capture the attention and hearts of multiple audiences.”
—NACLA

“Wrenching…. Remarkable stories…. [A] multilayered, affecting first-person narrative of a young woman’s radicalization during a turbulent time of repression by El Salvador’s government and military.… A harrowing firsthand look at the Salvadoran civil war and its enormous human toll.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“As a journalist visiting El Salvador during its brutal civil war, I met Ana Margarita Gasteazoro in the women’s prison of Ilopango. I was struck by her passion for justice, her honesty, and her compassion for what the people of her country have suffered. The same qualities shine through in this book. Judy Blankenship and Andrew Wilson have done a great service in making this remarkable woman’s story available to readers. I hope they will be as inspired and moved by it as I am.”
—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
 

“Tell Mother I’m in Paradise is a beautifully told story of a woman searching for fulfillment who finds her purpose in a cause greater than herself. This is a powerful—and rare—feminist account of political agitation, revolution, imprisonment, and family told without apology or second-guessing. Ana Margarita Gasteazoro’s confidence, courage, and glamour are rendered with such warmth and intimacy that the reader feels they’ve connected with a long-lost friend.”
—Eileen Markey, author of A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura

“Gasteazoro’s riveting account tells the story of an unlikely revolutionary who turned against her class to join the national liberation movement that fought the US-backed military dictatorship to a draw after twelve years of civil war. Her narrative is at once harrowing and disarming, insightful and inspiring.”
—Jacobin