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Jessica Hoppe Author of First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream May 20 2025 3:30pm in the Masto Conference Center

05/07/2025
profile-icon Rhonda Kitchens

ABOUT JESSICA

Jessica Hoppe is a Honduran Ecuadorian writer and the author of First in the Family (Flatiron Books, 2024), which was selected by Esquire, People, San Francisco Chronicle, Marie Claire, Latina Media, and HipLatina as one of the best memoirs of 2024.

Named a writer to watch by Publishers Weekly (Fall 2024), Hoppe's work has appeared in the Latino Book Review, The New York Times, Vogue, and elsewhere. Hoppe is a board member of Time of Butterflies, a nonprofit supporting families through domestic abuse recovery, and is an organizer with the CentAm & Isthmian Writers group. She lives in New York City.

Co-Sponsored by
M.E.Ch.A

CEID Committee for equity, Inclusion, and Diversity

William C. Bonaudi Library is the Winner of Latinx Kid Bookfest And Penguin Random House Campus Visit Fund Spring 2025
Contact: RhondaK@bigbend.edu

This will be virtual in the Masto Conference rooms C/D and online.  Email for Zoom link.  

 

ENJOY 

In person we will have a yogurt parfait buffet. 

 

THE BOOK 

We will have more books closer to the event. Let me know if you would like to be on the waitlist.  We are making copies of the book introduction available as Hoppe said that should be useful for those who have not read the book.  

 

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING...

"An unflinching and intimate memoir of recovery by Jessica Hoppe, Latinx writer, advocate, and creator of NuevaYorka.

“A powerful thunderclap of a memoir.” ―Lilliam Rivera, author of Dealing in Dreams

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024: Today.com, LupitaReads, Electric Literature, Esquire, Publishers Weekly

In this deeply moving and lyrical memoir, Hoppe shares an intimate, courageous account of what it means to truly interrupt cycles of harm. For readers of The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford, and Heavy by Kiese Laymon.

During the first year of quarantine, drug overdoses spiked, the highest ever recorded. And Hoppe’s cousin was one of them. “I never learned the true history of substance use disorder in my family,” Hoppe writes. “People just disappeared.” At the time of her cousin’s death, she’d been in recovery for nearly four years, but she hadn’t told anyone.

In First in the Family, Hoppe shares her journey, the first in her family to do so, and takes the reader on a remarkable investigation of her family’s history, the American Dream, and the erasure of BIPOC from recovery institutions and narratives, leaving the reader with an urgent message of hope." - Amazon

OTHER

Jessica Hoppe Author Website

7 words that saved my life ( short )

7 words that saved my life (long)

 

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Poster for the First in the Family Jessica Hoppe Event

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