In 'What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez,' a family struggles with a child's disappearance

Ruthy Ramirez, the 13-year-old middle child of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island, vanished without a trace. But more than a decade later, as the family still feels the weight of her absence, one of her sisters spots a woman who she thinks might be her sister on a reality TV show. In her new novel, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez, author Claire Jimenez explores the way loss, violence and spectacle impacts the women in the Ramirez family. And as she tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, there's a big divide in the way reality tv treats white women and women of color.

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