Someday Mija, Youll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman: A Memoir

Someday Mija, Youll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman is a memoir that turns time on its head, circling through terror and joy with eloquence and becoming its own sacrament of resistance. Foreword Reviews, 5-star review At eighteen, Yvonne Martinez flees brutal domestic violence and is taken in by her dying grandmother . . . who used to be a sex worker. Before she dies, her grandmother reveals family secrets and shares her uncommon wisdom. Someday, Mija, she tells Yvonne, youll learn the difference between a whore and a working woman. She also shares disturbing facts about their familys historyeventually leading Yvonne to discover that her grandmother was trafficked as a child in Depression-era Utah by her own mother, Yvonnes great-grandmother, and that she was blamed for her own rape. In the years that follow her grandmothers passing, Yvonne gets an education and starts a family. As she heals from her own abuse by her mother and stepfather, she becomes an advocate/labor activist. Grounded in her grandmothers dictum not to whore herself out, she learns to fight for herself and teaches others to do the sameexposing sexual harassment in the labor unions where she works and fighting corruption. Intense but ultimately uplifting, Someday Mija, Youll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman is a compelling memoir in essays of transforming transgenerational trauma into resilience and post-traumatic growth.