Carmen Aguirre has lived many lives, all of them to the full. At age six she was a Chilean refugee adjusting to life as a Latina in North America. At eighteen she was a revolutionary dissident married to a generous-hearted man she couldn't fully love. In her early twenties she fought to find her voice as an actress and to break away from the stereotypical roles thrust upon her--Housekeeper, Hotel Maid, Mexican Hooker #1--all the while navigating the complex paths of lust and heartbreak. As she grew in her career, Aguirre became a writer, a director, an actress, and then a mother, but alongside her many multi-faceted identities was another that was unbearable to embrace yet impossible to escape; that of the thirteen-year-old girl attacked by one of Canada's most feared rapists. Thirty-three years after the assault, Aguirre decided it was time to meet the man who changed her life. Fierce, funny and enlightening, Aguirre interweaves her account of overcoming the attack...

Set in a run-down Vancouver hotel in 1974, only months after the start of the infamous Pinochet regime, eight Chilean refugees struggle, at times haplessly, at times profoundly, to decide if fleeing their homeland means they have abandoned their friends and responsibilities or not. More than a dark comedy, this play gives voice to refugee communities from all corners.

• Winner of Canada Reads 2012• Nominated for the Charles Taylor prize and the BC Award for Canadian Non-FictionOn September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a violent coup that removed Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, from office. Thousands were arrested, tortured and killed under the repressive new regime. Six-year-old Carmen Aguirre and her younger sister fled the country with their parents for a life in exile.Five years later, when her mother and stepfather returned to South America as Chilean resistance members, Carmen and her sister’s double lives began. At 18, Carmen herself joined the resistance, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia, and euphoria. Something Fierce takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictatorship-run Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina, and Pinochet's Chile during the eventful decade between 1979 and 1989.Dramatic, suspenseful, and darkly comic, it is a rare account of revolutionary life and a passionate argument against forgetting.Review"A moving, heart-racing journey through the political landscape of South America during the 70s and 80s told by a brave daughter of the Chilean resistance. An inspiration to anyone who strives to live a life of passion and purpose."—Camilla Gibb, author of Sweetness in the Belly"Aguirre's story is the personal experience of a brave young woman...Something Fierce is raw, courageously honest and funny; an insightful journey into the formation of a revolutionary soul."—Globe & Mail"A coming-of-age story that blends birthday parties and puppy love with indoctrination in the tradecraft of subversion: how to arrange the delivery of secret documents, how to lose a police tail, how to lead a double life."—Toronto Star"Carmen writes like someone who knows how it feels to exhale with no certainty that another breath will follow...The stories that fill this book feel like the stories of several lives, not the adventurous, exhilarating and harrowing adolescence and early adulthood of one extraordinary person."—National Post"[Aguirre] has crafted a narrative packed with suspense, emotion, and dollops of sardonic humour. Even better, her searing memoir conveys the confusion and heartache of adolescence alongside the violent upheavals of Latin America during the late 1970s...Never polemical or self-pitying, Aguirre has written a crisp, dramatic account of growing up under extraordinary circumstances."—Quill & Quire"Aguirre's writing is, indeed, something fierce. That she has finally told this story is a triumph. This extraordinary book is four texts in one: a hilarious, pelvis-rocking story of a young girl on an impassioned journey into womanhood, a harrowing testament to the physical and mental labours involved in underground revolutionary work, a history of a Latin America ravaged by dictatorship and neoliberal economics, and a deeply loving memoir of a family."—Karen Connelly, author of The Lizard Cage and The Dream of a Thousand Lives"a brutally honest and wryly funny story, told through the eyes of a girl young enough to yearn for cork-soled platforms and steal kisses with boys."—Georgia StraightAbout the AuthorCarmen Aguirre is a Vancouver-based writer and theatre artist who has worked extensively in North and South America. She has written or co-written eighteen plays, including The Refugee Hotel, which was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for best new play in 2010. Something Fierce is her first book.

A gripping, darkly comic first-hand account of a young underground revolutionary during the Pinochet dictatorship in 1980s Chile.On September 11, 1973, a violent coup removed Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, from office. Thousands were arrested, tortured and killed under General Augusto Pinochet's repressive new regime. Soon after the coup, six-year-old Carmen Aguirre and her younger sister fled the country with their parents for Canada and a life in exile.In 1978, the Chilean resistance issued a call for exiled activists to return to Latin America. Most women sent their children to live with relatives or with supporters in Cuba, but Carmen's mother kept her precious girls with her. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls' own double lives began. At eighteen, Carmen herself joined the resistance. With conventional day jobs as a cover, she...