Becoming Maria :: Sonia Manzano

• Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx by Sonia Manzano on Amazon

How fun that Sonia Manzano has written a book that tells part of her story about becoming Maria, the character she played – the character she became – on Sesame Street for all those wonderful years.

"Fragments," Part I of the three sections of this autobiographical memoir was slower than cold molasses, not at all colorful or evocative, and ideally would have been much better presented as a series of Sesame-Street style video segments. But this is a book that's almost in print (Amazon Vine sent me an advance reader copy) without an option for video embedded in the pages. In fact, it was so dull, despite being quite compulsive about reading almost every page, paragraph and word of most books, I seriously considered not finishing the book and posting a 2-star review.

In spite of myself I kept reading, and Part II, La Lucha or The Struggle, suddenly takes off while Maria gets older, comes of age, moves out of her South Bronx environment and brings her readers along with her, her acquaintances, and her friends. III, The Beginning, is full of social, geographical, and psychological movement, with details about Sonia's personal and emerging professional growth. Becoming Maria grew into a book I was reluctant to put down, that I even read into the night (unheard of for me), and wished it hadn't ended with Sonia's Sesame Street audition/interview. We know the rest of the story? We've watched a whole lot of Sesame Street so we sort of know the rest of the story, but I'd still love a sequel.

PS I hadn't realized Godspell originally was improv! Given the style of every production I've ever seen, that makes sense to me.

• My Amazon Review: enjoyable and almost captivating