ABSTRACT
Doña Guilhermina was seated in her favorite spot, the secluded patio at the back of her small guest house, amidst the luxuriant, carefully tended plants still dripping from their thorough late-afternoon watering. As the steam began to rise from the tiles, the dignified, silver-haired grandmother began to recount her singular past, conversing with me while mending by hand the worn but spotless pillowcases for her guests’ use.
Doña Guilhermina’s faultless memory endows her narrative with afluid coherence and vividness, whether she is recalling her earliest memory as a refugee at age two, seeking sanctuary in a church in León; her family’s deportation by Anastasio (Tacho) Somoza during World War II because of their German birth; her eyewitness account of the bombing of Dresden; or her more recent experiences as owner of a private business in revolutionary Nicaragua. Here we see one who has learned, practically from the cradle, what it means to be a survivor.
