The Arrogant Years: One Girl's Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn
3.5/5
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About this ebook
“[Lagnado writes] in crystalline yet melodious prose.”
—New York Times
Lucette Lagnado’s acclaimed, award-winning The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit (“[a] crushing, brilliant book” —New York Times Book Review) told the powerfully moving story of her Jewish family’s exile from Egypt. In her extraordinary follow-up memoir, The Arrogant Years, Lagnado revisits her first years in America, and describes a difficult coming-of-age tragically interrupted by a bout with cancer at age 16. At once a poignant mother and daughter story and a magnificent snapshot of the turbulent ’60s and ’70s, The Arrogant Years is a stunning work of memory and resilience that ranges from Cairo to Brooklyn and beyond—the unforgettable true story of a remarkable young woman’s determination to push past the boundaries of her life and make her way in the wider world.
Lucette Lagnado
Born in Cairo, Lucette Lagnado and her family were forced to flee Egypt as refugees when she was a small child, eventually coming to New York. She was the author of The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, for which she received the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2008, and is the coauthor of Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz, which has been translated into nearly a dozen foreign languages. Joining the Wall Street Journal in 1996, she received numerous awards and was a senior special writer and investigative reporter. She died in 2019.
Read more from Lucette Lagnado
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Arrogant Years: One Girl's Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for The Arrogant Years
25 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Title: The Arrogant YearsAuthor: Lucette LagnadoFormat: KindleReading Dates: Oct 28 - Dec 29, 2012Rating: **1/2The Arrogant Years is a memoir of Lucette Lagnado, a journalist for the New York Post, who was born a Jew in Cairo, Egypt. I have to admit I thought most Jews left Egypt around the time of Moses, and apparently most Jews did, but there was a remnant who stayed or ended up there and survived until the mid 20th century. Lagnado's family descends from that remnant.Lagnado begins the book with stories of her mother, Edith, a protected but bright young girl from Cairo who caught the eye of the influential Cattaui family. She enjoyed the privileged position as a teacher and librarian with the family until she met Lagnado's father, a rather sketchy character who insisted that his new wife quit her job. Several years and children later, during the Nasser dictatorship, their lives threatened by more and more restrictions, Lagnado's family left for Paris and eventually Brooklyn.At this point the focus of the book changes from Edith to Lagnado herself. She spends quite a bit of time relating how she grew up in the middle of the women's liberation movement and how she tried to reconcile that with the strict separation of women and men in her local synagogue. This is followed with a recap of a medical crisis, her college years, her subsequent life as a journalist, and then her struggles as she tries to balance being a good daughter and a working woman with an elderly, disabled mother.Lagnado ends the book by traveling the globe, reconnecting with the people of her earlier stories, and bringing the reader up to date on their lives. Part of the problem I found with the book was that there were so many of these minor characters, few of whom ever seemed described enough to make me distinguish among them, that the ending left me flat.In doing some post-reading research I found that Lagnado had written an earlier memoir about her father and the family's exile from Egypt. It was at that point (and only at that point) that I realized that this book was supposed to be a similar tribute to her mom. That did help me understand why certain stories were included that I had puzzled over and why I enjoyed the beginning and the part of the book where Lagnado hooks up with the Cattui family to document their fortunes since Cairo. Truth be told the stories about her mother were for the most part more interesting that than the stories that Lagnado wrote about herself. I think if she had concentrated more on her mother and less on herself, the whole book would have been more engaging.That being said, I wonder now about the memoir she wrote about her father, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World. Perhaps the stories in The Arrogant Years were weak because she had already told her story in the first book? Almost enough motivation to make me pick up the first book and find out. Almost.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Arrogant Years: One Girl's Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn by Lucette Lagnado is a memoir about the author's early childhood in Cairo, the circumstances that brought her family to New York City, and her adolescence/college years in the United States. It is also a loving remembrance of the author's mother and her heritage.I instantly loved Lucette's mother, Edith, because of her love for education and libraries. As a young woman before her marriage, Edith worked as a teacher for an exclusive Cairo academy, L'Ecole Cattaui, and helped develop their first library: "Madame Cattaui decreed the school would have a state-of-the-art library and la chere Mademoiselle Matalon would be the one to organize it. That was the extraordinary project entrusted to Edith - to set up a library that would allow even students of modest means, or simply those with great intellectual curiosity, to read and study and take home any books they fancied "...It was a thrilling assignment, and Edith, still in her teens, rose to the challenge. Driven, committed, and thoroughly impassioned by her undertaking, she had never felt so empowered as when she ordered more books, and money was no object, and she could indulge in all her tastes" (pg. 57).Sounds like heaven! I'm a librarian, but when I order books, not only is money an object, but I can only order boring health sciences books. Even so, it's thrilling to order new books and handle them when they come in. I can only imagine how much more amazing that would be if I were actually interested in the books!When Edith married her husband, Leon, he expected her to quit her job. She did so very reluctantly. Years later, after the family moved to Brooklyn and was under financial strain, Edith ignored her husband's wishes and got a job - at a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library: "One day after dropping me off at Berkeley, she had trudged across the expanse of Prospect Park West and interviewed for a job at the imposing library with the big bronze entranceway. And though she didn't have any of the classic credentials - a college degree or even a high school equivalency diploma - she was able to draw on her vast store of knowledge and her literary sensibility to persuade the library to hire her practically on the spot. "...With a few tweaks to her wardrobe, thirty years after L'Ecole Cattaui, my mother was ready to return to work at a library. "It was a part-time job and she was only a clerk. Her pay was a pittance - barely above minimum wage. But no matter, to her mind she was going back to those halcyon days working with the pasha's wife. She would be her own woman again, and more important still, she would be surrounded by books" (pg. 205-206).As Lucette makes clear, Edith "was passionate about libraries - it gave her such pleasure to step into those quiet rooms filled with books... She trusted libraries implicitly - they were sacred to her, holy sites" (pg. 189).The title of the book - The Arrogant Years - comes from a quote in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night: "She put on the first ankle-length day dress she had owned in many years and crossed herself reverently with Chanel Sixteen.... How good.... to be worshipped again, to pretend to have a mystery. She had lost two of the great arrogant years in the life of a pretty girl - now she felt like making up for them." The premise that Lagnado takes from this quotation is that nearly every woman, at some time in her life, though generally when she's young and knows everything, has her "arrogant years" - a time when she feels most confident about herself, her appearance, her intelligence: "that period in a young woman's life when she feels - and is - on top of the world" (pg. 58).This book, as evidenced by the title, revolves around the "arrogant years" of two women living in completely different worlds. A mother and a daughter, living and fighting with each other, loving and supporting the other. Lagnado tells her mother's story of young womanhood in Cairo, and juxtaposes her own adolescence in Brooklyn, New York. We get an account of Edith's life - the ups and downs, her arrogant years and her repressed years.Overall, The Arrogant Years is a touching and thoughtful story of mothers and daughters, adapting to the inevitable changes in life, and the strength of womanhood. It doesn't matter that when we pick up the book we don't know these two women. As we read, we come to know them and respect them for their amazing experiences and the obstacles they overcame. Furthermore, the writing is clear, drawing the reader in without barriers. A memoir worth reading, for sure.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I could not put this book, and read all 400 pages in one sitting. Outstanding description of Egypt and the horror of leaving a person's country and moving to another location. I knew so little of Egypt and gained an immense bit of knowledge from Ms.Lagnado's description of her family's flight and plight. But the mesmerzing part of the non fiction novel was the language. I truly did not know of Lagnados' work, but she is someone I will foliow from now on. I especially was please to read of her relationship with her husband; such a loving addition to this marvelous book. Do not hesitate to buy this book for a loved one who thinks there are no more great books out there. Having taken my father into my home when he was ill and dying, I felt bonded to Ms. Lagnado as she told of her mother and father's last months, and the joy she felt in taking care of them. I had never had anyone put into words what I felt about this time of my life, and Lucetted Lagnado was able to do that for me. I, too, left a country (USA) to live in a foreign place (the Netherlands) and could relate to her having to learn new customs, traditions and how to fit in. Run, don't walk, to buy this book and immerse yourself in the life of a talented writer. I now will go out and buy her first book, which won the Sami Rohr prize for Jewish Literature, "The Man in the White Sharksking Suit", which is about her father. If you haven't bought either book, start with this one, and then get the one I am now reviewing, which is about her mother and their life and relationship. Ms Lagnado is not only a talented writer, her writings are that of an artist as she paints family portraits with words.