When she does public readings of her memoir, Vancouver author, playwright and theatre artist Carmen Aguirre often gets asked political questions about her native Chile and growing up under General Augusto Pinoche's repressive regime.
But, she confesses, one of her most favourite talks was at a college in Vancouver when a crowd made up of mostly 18- and 19-year-old female students quizzed her - for her entire presentation - about how to get dates.
"I told them what it was like to pick up boys in South America in the '80s and I'm sure it's very different in Canada in 2013," she said, with a big laugh.
Tomorrow (Thursday), Aguirre will be bringing her wealth of worldly knowledge to Coquitlam's Place des Arts when she reads from Something Fierce and takes questions from the floor as part of the Maillardville facility's Salon Speaker Series.
Something Fierce, Aguirre said, is not a description of herself but rather of her homeland.
"I think that it can be read in many ways, which is why I like that title," she said, "but, in the book, I refer to Chile as 'something fierce.'"
Her first-hand account of how she - as a six-year-old child - and her younger sister fled to Canada with their parents after the coup and led a life in exile is the narrative to the best-selling book that has won her numerous accolades including first prize of last year's CBC Canada Reads contest.
She recounts how her mother and Canadian stepfather later returned the family to South America to start a safe house for resistance members in Bolivia, and how she became a part of that campaign at the age of 18.
Aguirre said she's now writing a second memoir that picks up where Something Fierce left off, of which the working title is Mexican Hooker No. 1.
Hear Carmen Aguirre at Place des Arts (1120 Brunette Ave., Coquitlam) at 7 p.m. on April 18. Admission is $5 plus tax. The last Salon Speaker Series presentation for the season will be on May 30 from Dale Barltrop, concertmaster for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. For more information, visit placedesarts.ca or call 604-664-1636.
