This extraordinary memoir from Colombian painter Emma Reyes, who died in 2003, is drawn from letters written over three decades. Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Alarcón, Reyes writes with captivating detail of a childhood of severe deprivation. Her first memory, from the 1930s, involves games on the rubbish heap outside the windowless room in Bogota where she lived with her mother and two siblings. They move to Guateque, where her mother gives birth to her fourth illegitimate child (he is left on his father’s doorstep). She abandons Emma at the age of seven. She and her sister end up in a convent, where they join 150 orphan girls in shame and menial labor. Emma escapes in her teens, and becomes an influential artist and intellectual associated with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Jean-Paul Sartre and Gabriel García Márquez. (Credit: Penguin Classics)