Full Description
Runner-up, Bronze Medal, Independent Publishers Book Awards: Memoir/Autobiography Category, 2009
Unclear about his future career path, Steve Reifenberg found himself in the early 1980s working at a small orphanage in a poor neighborhood in Santiago, Chile, where a determined single woman was trying to create a stable home for a dozen or so children who had been abandoned or abused. With little more than good intentions and very limited Spanish, the 23-year-old Reifenberg plunged into the life of the Hogar Domingo Savio, becoming a foster father to kids who stretched his capacities for compassion and understanding in ways he never could have imagined back in the United States.
In this beautifully written memoir, Reifenberg recalls his two years at the Hogar Domingo Savio. His vivid descriptions create indelible portraits of a dozen remarkable kids-mature-beyond-her-years VerÓnica; sullen, unresponsive Marcelo; and irrepressible toddler AndrÉs, among them. As Reifenberg learns more about the children's circumstances, he begins to see the bigger picture of life in Chile at a crucial moment in its history.
The early 1980s were a time of economic crisis and political uprising against the brutal military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Reifenberg skillfully interweaves the story of the orphanage with the broader national and international forces that dramatically impact the lives of the kids. By the end of Santiago's Children, Reifenberg has told an engrossing story not only of his own coming-of-age, but also of the courage and resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable residents of Latin America.
Contents
Foreword by Paul Farmer
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Visions of a Family Farm
Chapter 2. The Arrival
Chapter 3. Spanish Lessons
Chapter 4. Olga and the Hogar
Chapter 5. Not as Imagined
Chapter 6. Summer
Chapter 7. More Spanish and Other Lessons about Chile
Chapter 8. Politics
Chapter 9. The Pacific Coast
Chapter 10. The End of Summer
Chapter 11. A New School Year
Chapter 12. Professional Conversations
Chapter 13. On Being a Teacher
Chapter 14. Noisy and Complicated
Chapter 15. The Farm Revisited
Chapter 16. Donors, Demons, and Dentists
Chapter 17. Marcelo
Chapter 18. An Unexpected Journey
Chapter 19. A Home on Tupungato Street
Chapter 20. Catholics, Mormons, and Evangelicals
Chapter 21. Boys, Babies, and Biters
Chapter 22. The University
Chapter 23. Winter in a New Neighborhood
Chapter 24. SebastiÁn
Chapter 25. Explaining a Few Things
Chapter 26. You're Going to Do What?
Chapter 27. Groping in the Dark
Chapter 28. God Will See Us Through
Chapter 29. The End of the Road
Chapter 30. The Days of Waiting
Chapter 31. The Visit of the Gringos
Chapter 32. Searching for Something
Chapter 33. Taking Leave
Epilogue
