• First in the Family

  • A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream
  • By: Jessica Hoppe
  • Narrated by: Jessica Hoppe
  • Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins

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First in the Family  By  cover art

First in the Family

By: Jessica Hoppe
Narrated by: Jessica Hoppe
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Publisher's summary

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 fans 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 listener on a remarkable investigation of her family’s history, the American Dream, and the erasure of BIPOC from recovery institutions and narratives, leaving the listener with an urgent message of hope.

©2024 Jessica Hoppe (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Hoppe debuts with a bold and illuminating account of getting sober and her attempts to ‘decolonize recovery’ by deconstructing ingrained narratives about people of color and substance abuse... She presents her findings in sharp, forceful prose, effortlessly weaving together her personal story and her insights into the intersection between race and sobriety. This is essential reading."―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

First in the Family is a riveting memoir, but also a tender guide to overcoming—addiction, trauma, colonialism. It takes a writer with great emotional intelligence and generosity to trace the harrowing moments of her life back to the invisible systems and structures that damage every one of us. Jessica Hoppe has done that more.”Alejandro Varela, author of The Town of Babylon

"Jessica Hoppe writes with grace and gripping candor about being the first in her family to recover from addiction in this fiery debut memoir."—Esquire

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