The third installment in my Death Dance Destiny Memoir Trilogy
is finally here! Get a copy as a gift for yourself or for your friends, family and loved ones. Perfect this holiday season!
Intoxicating Tango: My Years In Buenos Aires
got another fabulous review from Reedsy Discovery!
Must read
Intoxicating Tango: My Years in Buenos Aires is a memoir that will sweep you off your feet!
Intoxicating Tango: My Years in Buenos Aires by Cherie Magnus was a captivating read from the very first page. The author used such vivid descriptions to describe her South American expat life that I could picture the chaotic streets and smokey rooms perfectly. Tango is the perfect metaphor for living abroad, really. The seduction, the nuances, the rhythm, the surrender and finally the disillusionment are the stages most expats go through.
In June 2014, Cherie Magnus stepped off a plane with a few suitcases to begin her life in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This third installment of the author’s life covers those 10 memorable years in the birthplace of the tango. She tells us how she infiltrated the dance halls of milonguero, mastered the miradas, and tangoed her heart away. What an amazing story!
Although not particularly familiar with the steps of the tango, the author made it come alive in my mind. So don’t let not knowing how to tango keep you from finding pleasure in Ms. Magnus’s accounts as she chronicles the trials and tribulations of learning how to manage in a foreign country.
You don’t have to be well-versed in South American language or culture either to enjoy this particular story. A glossary of Argentine terms was included at the end, which certainly helped on some words that aren’t used in the Spanish speaking country I live in. Mostly though, the Spanish terms were easily understood in the narrative...
I’m sure that you too will get swept away by the dips and turns found in Intoxicating Tango: My Years in Buenos Aires by Cherie Magnus.
A story so sensual, so unconventional, and so shocking… it could only be true.
After a series of life-changing and terrible losses, Cherie moves to steamy Buenos Aires, where the romantic attention of the local steamy Buenos Aires, where the romantic attention of the localmen reignites her youth and sexuality. But women like her, who stay to create a life and dance the best tango in the world, rapidly find themselves bombarded with flattery and compliments by the caballeros and milongueros – Men who see women as little more than sexual objects…making life for a free-spirited American woman more sensuous and difficult.
Soon she meets Ramon, the handsome and skilled tanguero who quickly dances his way to her heart. But will the stifling atmosphere of sexual oppression poison the life she has worked so hard to create, far from her home of Los Angeles?
Based on the author’s true experiences… Intoxicating Tango pulls back the red velvet curtain of the milonga (the place where social tango is danced), and reveals the secrets of the viveza criolla– the “artful lying” and machismo that drives life in Buenos Aires.
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“Intoxicating Tango is the story of Cherie’s persistent Tango from tragedy to triumph. Cherie La Gess Magnus and I were reporters for our high school newspaper. We had one date. Beatniks were all the rage. We went to a Coffee House, because that’s what Beatniks did. Cherie’s personality was intoxicating. She ended our lively date by telling me she only had time for Dance. Fifty years later I remembered our date and we reconnected via email. Over those decades, life delivered body blows to both of us. Cherie’s indomitable character had given her the Spirit, tools, moxie, and compassion to make it through no matter what. She excelled in overcoming adversity through dance. Dance is fueled by the feel-good endorphins released in the synchrony of dance with music, especially Tango, where the effect of touch cannot be minimized, where the submission to and submersion within music creates a transcendental happening. The Milonga also provided a way of instantly cultivating friends if only from the acts of seeing and being seen. And, Tango’s intimate, shimmering, physical contact is flattering in so many ways, without the obligation to sleep with one another--there being no other goal than constant betterment of the dance. As capable a Memoirist as a Tango dancer, Cherie’s journal-like diary faithfully narrates her brave journey populated with terse observations about Argentine culture and foibles.. While reading Intoxicating Tango I laughed, I cried, got possessive, got protective, felt pity, felt lust. In other words, I got my money’s worth from reading Cherie’s enthralling saga. I eschewed comments here on other poignant scenes in this fabulous book to let the reader discover them.”
Rolland Vasin