In The Shadow of the Mountain
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
"When Silvia's mother called her home to Peru, she knew something finally had to give. A Latinx hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. She was deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she'd suffered as a child. Her visit to Peru would become a turning point in her life. Silvia started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent--the restricted oxygen at altitude, the vast expanse of emptiness around her, the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains, the nearness of death--woke her up. And then, she took her biggest pain to the biggest mountain: Everest. 'The Mother of the World,' as it's known in Nepal, allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn't go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her, their strength and community propelling her forward. In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of heroism, one which awakens in all of us a lust for adventure, gratitude for the strong women in our lives, and faith in our own resilience"
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Autobiography about the first Peruvian woman who climbed Everest, not in spite of - but as a form of therapy for - a violent past that has been marked by abuse, addiction, illness, and loss. In this book, Everest (and mountaineering in general) is often pushed to the background in favour of a vulnerable but honest retelling of the life of a daring woman who has been marginalized from birth on the basis of her gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. That being said, I wouldn't have picked this book up had I known that it's not so much about mountaineering as about Vasquez-Lavado's personal life. It's definitely no Into Thin Air, and at certain points, the tempo dries up and the story is dragged out. Still, the book offers an emic perspective on a range of topics that one easily fails to consider when reading the more traditional mountaineering literature, and in there lies the book's biggest serendipitous asset.
