The Ladies’ Gallery is a memoir that tells the stories of three women: the author Irene Vilar, her mother Gladys Méndez, and her grandmother the Puerto Rican independence activist Lolita Lebrón.
It was first published by Pantheon Books in 1996 as A Message From God in the Atomic Age and then by Vintage in 1998 as The Ladies’ Gallery: A Memoir of Family Secrets.
Vilar mourned her mother's death and decided to attend school in the United States, where her aunt and uncle were working, and then in Spain, in the town where her paternal grandfather fled around the time of the Spanish Civil War.
Gladys's own mother left her to be raised by her grandparents so that she could go to the United States and work during the so-called “Great Migration” of people from the island of Puerto Rico during the mid-twentieth century.
In addition to the women's stories as imagined by Vilar, the memoir includes historical information, interview segments, and reflections on issues from cultural identity to literature.