cover image Evita: In My Own Words

Evita: In My Own Words

Eva Peron. New Press, $13.95 (128pp) ISBN 978-1-56584-353-0

Eva Maria Duarte de Peron died of uterine cancer in 1952, but ""Mi mensaje,"" ""My Message,"" wasn't found until some 30 years later, in a government archive, and then published in 1987. Purported to be the deathbed manuscript spoken of in her biographies, it is disputed by surviving sisters and other family members, who claim that she did not write it. Joseph A. Page, in his lengthy introduction, states that this document is ""probably based in part on dictation by"" Eva Peron and ""provides further evidence of how difficult it is to locate the real person behind the myths shrouding the figure the world knows simply as Evita."" In My Own Words: Evita, translated from the Spanish by Laura Dail, contains facsimile pages, photos from the National Archive of Argentina and a chronology of Eva Peron's life, along with the translated document and introduction.