According to Soledad

Memoir of growing up in Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s by award-winning author."According to Soledad" gives voice to Katie Goodridge Ingram to tell the story of her bi-cultural childhood. She was born in Mexico City and was raised there and in Jalisco. Soledad speaks of being part American and part Mexican. She says: "My skin is white but my soul is brown." She knows city life with the family's multicultural and artistic friends. She also knows village life with no running water and no electricity. She feels like a hybrid but is intrigued by and devoted to her unusual immigrant parents who left the US to spend their lives in Mexico. Her father is a rare book dealer often away hunting for the find of a lifetime. Her mother is a designer with an adventurous spirit who learns to shoot a gun in order to protect their house from frequent burglaries. This story could be called "A border runs through it" to describe Soledad who manages two languages every day and is hyper-observant of the sometimes shocking differences among the Mexicans, Americans and foreigners in her life. Katie Goodridge Ingram was born in Mexico and lived there for many years, first in Mexico City and then in Ajijic, a village and artist colony on the shores of Lake Chapala in Jalisco. She wrote her first story when she was nine and has continued to write ever since. Much of her writing was influenced by the fact that, as a child of immigrants to Mexico, she felt neither completely Mexican nor fully foreign. In her articles for "Mexico City News" she followed two of her many interests: art and the cultural variety of people and villages in her area. In her gallery she exhibited the works of resident artists as well of visitors to the area and of newly discovered talent. When her children were small she co-founded a bilingual school with other parents. Her children are also bilingual and multi-cultural. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies, most recently in "SOLO NOVO: Psalms of Cinder and Silt." She is currently working on a novel set in the state of Michoacán.