Tama­ra Yajia was born ugly. That’s the first thing the Argen­tine Amer­i­can writer and come­di­an tells us in her mem­oir. Chron­i­cling her life from the very moment she enters the world and through the forty years that fol­low, Yajia takes us on a ride that feels like a roller­coast­er on caf­feine: no paus­es, no warn­ings, just a relent­less, exhil­a­rat­ing tum­ble through chaos. 

Yajia’s par­ents met in Paso de los Liebres, an Argen­tin­ian fron­tier town where their fam­i­lies sold goods to Brazil­ians cross­ing the bor­der for cheap bar­gains. They were the only two Jew­ish fam­i­lies there, and they couldn’t stand each oth­er. Tamara’s grand­par­ents were inva­sive, intense, lov­ing­ly insuf­fer­able — all of which, accord­ing to Yajia, helps explain why the rest of her life went down the way it did. 

Feel­ing suf­fo­cat­ed by their fam­i­lies, and fac­ing Argentina’s col­laps­ing econ­o­my in the late ​’80s, Yaji­a’s par­ents made the deci­sion to immi­grate to the Unit­ed States. Leav­ing behind Buenos Aires’ crowd­ed streets and fast-spo­ken Span­ish, Tamara’s child­hood friend­ships and her grand­moth­er Rita’s Ashke­nazi and Sephardic home cook­ing, the fam­i­ly found them­selves in a motel in the vast sprawl of Los Ange­les with no papers and no plans. 

Even­tu­al­ly, her par­ents opened a stand named Sexy Chick­en in the food court of a shop­ping mall. (To this day, malls are Yaji­a’s favorite kind of place — sec­ond only, per­haps, to the stage). Yajia — an extreme­ly smart, cre­ative child, who day­dreamed about being in the spot­light — final­ly began to adapt to this new land­scape, lan­guage, and life. But then, Sexy Chicken’s sales plum­met­ed, lead­ing to the fam­i­ly’s return to Argentina.

Argenti­na, her once-beloved land, no longer felt like home. Tama­ra missed Eng­lish, her school­mates, and shop­ping malls. She fell into a depres­sion, com­plete­ly unno­ticed by her par­ents, and only found joy when she stepped onto a stage at Hebraica, a Jew­ish social club, where she per­formed a bor­der­line-sex­u­al Madon­na lip-sync rou­tine in front of an audi­ence of fam­i­lies and old rab­bis. She thrived. 

From there, she took act­ing class­es, secur­ing her path to becom­ing the star she was meant to be. By eleven, she was per­form­ing in mul­ti­ple pro­duc­tions, and when the oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time arrived — a role in a musi­cal TV show that would tour the coun­try with live con­certs — anoth­er crush­ing blow came: her par­ents were broke. It was time to try the US again.

Yajia writes as if she’s unload­ing years of pain, grief, and hard knocks. There are no dec­o­ra­tive flour­ish­es, no com­fort­ing con­clu­sions. With sharp, bit­ing prose, she recalls every detail, every tantrum, every embar­rass­ing fam­i­ly moment as if it hap­pened just yesterday.

She switch­es between describ­ing Buenos Aires’s cul­tur­al land­marks, icon­ic songs and trashy TV shows, as well as filthy Yid­dish curs­es and Argen­tine insults, to recount­ing her expe­ri­ence of pover­ty, the shame of being new to a place, the suf­fer­ing of start­ing from scratch again and again. Beneath the tragi­com­e­dy, there are under­ly­ing themes of migra­tion, men­tal health, addic­tion, sex — a land­scape of unre­solved strug­gle that goes far beyond being a failed child star.

It’s no sur­prise that this hilar­i­ous, trag­ic, and bril­liant­ly uncom­fort­able book is titled Cry for Me, Argenti­na—a sub­ver­sion of the icon­ic Evi­ta musi­cal anthem Don’t Cry for Me, Argenti­na. Yajia belts her own ver­sion at the top of her lungs: Cry because she was forced to leave her coun­try not once but twice. Cry because no one seemed to lis­ten to what she need­ed. Cry because every­thing col­laps­es. And when all else fails, she writes, turn­ing pain into laugh­ter, grief into com­e­dy, and trau­ma into a heady cock­tail of sex, drugs, fail­ure, frac­tured friend­ships, intense Judaism, fam­i­ly absur­di­ties, mixed lan­guages, and crossed hemi­spheres. You won’t be able to put it down.