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Culua: My Other Life in Mexico
ONE OF SAMANTHA WOOD'S earliest childhood memories is of her grandfather giving her a wobbly rubber map of Mexico that pulled apart like a jigsaw puzzle. He told her of the nomadic Culua-Mexica, who built a great empire in the valley of Mexico and became known as the Aztecs. Suddenly, the wanderers were a people with a new identity, a home...
Like her ancestors, Samantha yearns to find a place she can call home. Raised on the enticing glimpses of a dark and magical land conjured up by her Mexican mother's bedtime stories - a land oozing Latin rhythms, full of passion and fire, from bullfights to family feuds and bloody revolutions, roasted iguana and beans, to sugar skeletons - what begins as a visit to her enigmatic grandmother becomes a quest to find out what it means to be Mexican.
But as she learns to embrace Mexico verdadero - the real Mexico - she discovers a people who give a new meaning to larger than life, the fabulous strong women who rule the roost, the colourful macho men who think they do, and the invincible bonds between family, food, and the spirit world.
Always an outside, this nomad at last feels she has come home.
Like her ancestors, Samantha yearns to find a place she can call home. Raised on the enticing glimpses of a dark and magical land conjured up by her Mexican mother's bedtime stories - a land oozing Latin rhythms, full of passion and fire, from bullfights to family feuds and bloody revolutions, roasted iguana and beans, to sugar skeletons - what begins as a visit to her enigmatic grandmother becomes a quest to find out what it means to be Mexican.
But as she learns to embrace Mexico verdadero - the real Mexico - she discovers a people who give a new meaning to larger than life, the fabulous strong women who rule the roost, the colourful macho men who think they do, and the invincible bonds between family, food, and the spirit world.
Always an outside, this nomad at last feels she has come home.
- GenresTravel
249 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 23, 2017
2 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Samantha Wood
5 books22 followersSamantha Wood is the author of the memoir, Culua: My Other Life in Mexico, which was published in 2003. The Bay of Shadows, her first novel, was published in December 2016 and was inspired by the beach town where she grew up. Her follow-up novel, Under Ten Thousand stars, a love story set in wine country, was released in May 2019.
She began her writing career with a travel piece for the Qantas In-Flight magazine. From then on, she travelled extensively between Mexico and Australia before writing the memoir, Culua: My Other Life in Mexico, a love letter to her mother’s country. She went on to write The Bay of Shadows, a novel about the unconventional bonds of love, and Under Ten Thousand Stars, another tale of love against the odds. Her third novel, The Song of Clouds, set on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, and the last book in the Coastal Noir Trilogy was released on February 28, 2022. Her fourth novel, Shalimar was released on July 1, 2025. She is currently working on her sixth novel, a thriller set in Broken Hill, New South Wales.
To keep up with all her book news, head over to her website where you can sign up for her monthly newsletter:
www.samanthawoodauthor.com
www.instagram.com/samanthawoodauthor
www.facebook.com/samanthawoodauthor
She began her writing career with a travel piece for the Qantas In-Flight magazine. From then on, she travelled extensively between Mexico and Australia before writing the memoir, Culua: My Other Life in Mexico, a love letter to her mother’s country. She went on to write The Bay of Shadows, a novel about the unconventional bonds of love, and Under Ten Thousand Stars, another tale of love against the odds. Her third novel, The Song of Clouds, set on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, and the last book in the Coastal Noir Trilogy was released on February 28, 2022. Her fourth novel, Shalimar was released on July 1, 2025. She is currently working on her sixth novel, a thriller set in Broken Hill, New South Wales.
To keep up with all her book news, head over to her website where you can sign up for her monthly newsletter:
www.samanthawoodauthor.com
www.instagram.com/samanthawoodauthor
www.facebook.com/samanthawoodauthor
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 4, 2023
2023 bk 274. I purchased this book almost 20 years ago while on a trip to New Zealand. I read it then (well, on the plane ride home), enjoyed it enough as she writes with a voice I had not heard before (Mexican-Australian) and I kept it. Sadly the book fell behind the back of other books on the shelf only to be rediscovered by me this week as I was cleaning and weeding my collection. I'm very glad I kept the book - I spent 2 days revisiting a book I dimly remembered. Wood's description still jump very vividly to life and she is one travel author that makes one wish she had written more memoirs as I hate to have left her family and friends in Mexico without every knowing what happened to them. She also has a unique talent of making museum trips interesting - not sharing too many details, providing the tiny details that let you breathe the air and feel the breeze as you sit on the patio outside and contemplate what was seen. Lovely book.
August 1, 2022
Struggled to get through it. Very repetitive, I feel like it could’ve been a muuuuch shorter book. Cover art is beautiful though 🙂
April 10, 2023
Picked up this book as I'll be visiting Mexico for the first time this year. Really enjoyed it, gives a good insight into the people and culture.
April 1, 2015
Maybe because I enjoy reading books where the characters try to find their identities, or maybe because I was desperately in need of a break to some faraway places. This book caught my interest and had me glued. The first few pages were interesting but I wondered if I would be reading a whole book of complains and discomfort about Mexico. I almost put down the book. Glad I didn't because subsequently the writer described a more positive, exploratory immersion into the Mexican culture, which was in my opinion, interesting.
"Don't you want to know where you come from?" - that was the beginning of the quest. "It's like I never left" - this insightful comment was made by both Samantha and her mother, unknowingly, at separate times. And I smiled because that's what a home should be, you could be away for a long period of time and yet when you return, everything is as it was, as if you never left.
"Your family are not just people. There are as much a part of you as your own limbs. Without them you're incomplete."
"Don't you want to know where you come from?" - that was the beginning of the quest. "It's like I never left" - this insightful comment was made by both Samantha and her mother, unknowingly, at separate times. And I smiled because that's what a home should be, you could be away for a long period of time and yet when you return, everything is as it was, as if you never left.
"Your family are not just people. There are as much a part of you as your own limbs. Without them you're incomplete."
Want to read
October 21, 20141 of 20 for $10 20/1014
April 26, 2017
fun account of an Australian / Mexican from Melbourne discovering her roots and learning her mother tongue in Mexico
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews