Chita Rivera's memoir, "Chita"

[dirac]

A review of "Chita,"below.

Quote

This rift is evident in the memoir’s most vexing if revealing feature: the adoption of an alter ego named “Dolores” (Rivera’s birth name), which fittingly means “pain” in Spanish. Rivera casts Dolores as her racialized identification, tasked with doing what Chita at 90 (still) feels she can’t do: talk back, be sexual and express “negative” emotions. In contrast to the public-facing Chita, who is “sweet and kind,” Dolores “is a bat out of hell.”