My mother, myself: a lesbian daughter provides a rare glimpse into Puerto Rican family life in a somewhat disconnected memoir.

The Noise of Infinite Longing

* Luisita Lopez Torregrosa * Rayo * $24.95

In a modest Texas kitchen in 1994, six children of the Puerto Rican lawyer and Texas housewife Maria Luisa Torregrosa gather to mourn her. They argue, sort through boxes of mementos, and tell their own versions of the stories that the eldest daughter, Luisita Lopez Torregrosa, a New York Times editor, gathers in her first book, The Noise of Infinite Longing.

A rare picture of the Puerto Rican professional class in the 1950s and 1960s, Torregrosa's memoir is rich with details of her childhood: the cobblestone streets of San Juan; the hairpiece her grandmother made from her own hair; the wilting orchid given to her by Roland, her pallid boyfriend.

The family moved often, following the schooling and whims of Torregrosa's volatile father, Amaury, a doctor. Insistent on working, Torregrosa's mother kept up her law practice through almost every move. But she also bore child after child for a husband who would have preferred she abandon everything to cook for him and raise the children he considered his property. The unhappiness of her parents' marriage affected Torregrosa so strongly that she broke off relations with her father in adulthood. She makes it clear that her attraction to women was in part a reaction to the chauvinism she witnessed as a girl: her mother's courage diminished by her father's tantrums and jealousy, his drinking and womanizing.

Although grounded by the reunion scenes in that Edgewood, Tex., house, Torregrosa's memoir lacks a strong narrative pull. Individual scenes are vivid but often unconnected. Read it to savor the chronicle of an unusual family--one story of the Puerto Rican diaspora--but don't expect to be drawn into Torregrosa's world, in which site herself seems slightly out of place.