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Reymar Barrera

Dr.Stover

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Book Review

I’m Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

Author Biography

Erika L. Sánchez grew up in the town of Cicero, Illinois which borders the city’s

southwest side. As a daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants, Erika has always been

determined to defy borders of any kind. Growing up, her role model was Lisa Simpson for her

overbearing feminist and overachiever personality. This personality gave her the will and dream

of wanting to become a successful writer. Erika graduated from the University of Illinois at

Chicago, then went onto Madrid, Spain to pursue her education. Later on, she moved to

Albuquerque, New Mexico where she received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University

of New Mexico. After graduating, Sanchez worked with Cosmopolitan for Latinas by being a

columnist for love and sex advice. Sanchez also contributed to The Guardian, NBC News,

Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, and the Rolling Stone. Erika work been praised by The Washington

Post, The New York Times, The Bustle, and The United States Poet Laureate calling her work

the best new voice. Sánchez's young adult novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, her

debut novel, has been named best 15 young adult books appearing and is a finalist for the

National Book Award for young people's literature. She is currently living in Chicago with her

cat.

SUMMARY
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I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter written by Erika L. Sanchez, focuses on Julia

who grew up with the statement that perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college and

that they never abandon their family. But Julia is not the perfect Mexican daughter, her sister

Olga is, until she passes away in a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago. Throughout

this whole loss, no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken over the whole ordeal. Instead,

her mother seems to express her grief and pain by attacking Julia mentally and pointing out every

flaw she has. While grieving over Olga and reminiscing over her by exploring her room, Julia

discover things that caused questions to form on who Olga really was and was she really the

perfect daughter she was portrayed as. Throughout Julia journey on discovering what Olga back

story was, she encounters new issues that she never experienced due to her family strict belief

such as sexuality, romance, and herself. With the help of her best friend Lorena and Connor,

Julia goes on a painful and eye-opening journey.

ANALYSIS

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter written by Erika L. Sanchez, focuses on Julia

who grew up with the statement that perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college and

that they never abandon their family, but what if you do want to leave. Throughout this semester

we dived into numerous topics and issues that helped Chicanos and Mexican-American identify

who they are and what they wanted to be known as by others such as labels and wanting better

living. But while we have created a better understanding on who we are and now have be given a

moderately better lifestyle, there’s a new conflict that this generation of Mexican American faces

and that’s with our past generation. There’s a newer generation that want to partake in the new

experiences that wasn’t widely talked about before due to things being tabooer back then but is

now highly accepted in today time. This book is able to relate to class as it goes in depth on
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current issues that Mexican American Latinas faces now such as wanting an education and being

able to explore their own sexual health.

While the idea of Acculturation isn’t mention in this book, it is something that highly

effects Julia thoughts throughout her entire academic journey. She constantly doubts herself and

that she shouldn’t expect anything due to her background. Even when she gets accepted into

NYU with the full ride scholarship, she still compares herself to students she hasn’t met but

assume are better off, “I started worrying that I wouldn’t do well in college because I’m just a

broke-ass Mexican girl from a crappy neighborhood in Chicago. I convinced myself that all the

kids are going to be smarter than I am because they went to better schools”. A study by the

Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, informed that white attitudinal marginalization is related

to causing latinx to experience poor psychological change and stress, that it can cause the student

to withdraw from college. While this statement might sound outlandish, it is something that is a

main concern. Many multicultural students feel alone due to the fact that many don’t come from

an outstanding background but instead from a patchier life. But something that is able to combat

this fear is building an academic family. The Journal of Hispanic Higher Education also

informed how in order to succeed in pursuing an education, it best to build an academic family

that can help guide us and give us the motivation we need. Julia was able to build a very small

family with her friend Lorena, who gave her confidence on her appearance and that the way she

looks isn’t going to make any difference. The other person to help Julia was her English teacher

Mr.Inglur who gave her the confidence in her writing and letting her know that there need to be

more people like her out there speaking, someone who can express pain and love through words

that its changing.

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While Julia parents were a slight motivation to her wanting to succeed in school, Julia life

satisfaction was low due to the constant feeling that she was failing her parents. Her parents

express how they don’t mind if she does not go to college but instead just stay home and help

them but when Julia declines, her mother expresses anger over Julia wanting to leave. This is

able to relate to class as it is hard for parents to see their children's wanting to actually leave the

family, that some family even move altogether just to stay near. This whole issue of do I stay, or

do I leave does put a lot of pressure on students as you want to make your family happy but you

also want to be happy that instead of feeling free, you constantly feel trapped in this tug and pull

game. Julia experienced even more stress with this choice when her parents decide to send her to

Mexico for two weeks in order to “find” herself again and learn about her family. This caused a

huge wall to form between the two due to Julia becoming scared with the thought that they’re

ruining her chance of graduating on time and being able to go to college. It’s not until near the

end when Julia discovers her mother and father past that she feels connected with them and is

able to understand why they were hard on her that her life satisfaction was able to more satisfied.

Although education is a big topic in this book, another topic that is explored and is given

a spotlight is Julia wanting to explore her sexuality. In the entire book, Julia questioning sex and

desire to be more active with boys have been expressed quite a lot. Julia encounters a lot of love

interest, with Connor being the main important one. Connor is important as this is Julia first

boyfriend and also the boy who she loses her virginity to. As Julia relationship with Connor

grow, she informs her friend Lorena about everything but when asked what her mom thinks

about him, Julia informs that she’s keeping him a secret in fear of already knowing how her

mother will react. This relate to our reading over the article “Mexican American Immigrant

Mothers and Daughters” from the Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies mention, “as Latino
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youth acculturate to more mainstream U.S. norms and values, their expectations may differ from

those of their parents in ways that can cause conflict. For example, a Latina raised in the U.S.

may come to expect that she can date and have romantic relationships as an adolescent.

However, for her immigrant parents raised in Mexico, this may be a foreign concept, and to them

dating is reserved for an older age”.

The idea of dating is something that is seen as normal but when it comes to Latino

household, it can be seen as something unneeded and almost shameful. So many kids will keep

something simple like dating a secret to stay out of trouble but also not disappoint their parents.

Olga, the perfect daughter, also kept a secret about being in a relationship from her parents but is

discovered by Julia after her death that she been lying to the entire family about attending college

and instead been seeing a married man. This is an important fact to learn as Julia inform that her

mother comments quite frequently that sex is the evilest thing unmarried people, but Olga is

supposed to be the good pure daughter. This is somethings that is almost pretty common to do in

a Mexican household due to the stigma or views that is taught to children at a young age about

sex. Many girls are told that if you’re having sex, you’re no longer desirable or pure and just

thinking about doing such thing is a sin. This builds a tension on who you can turn to for

questions and advice on such an important topic.

This book was able to tackle the topic of wanting to explore one sexual health and also

the importance of achieving a higher education for today modern Mexican American. The book

also focuses highly on the stress that can be build up from wanting to please your parents but

also yourself which isn’t talked about a lot. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter does an

outstanding job on presenting current raw issues that Mexican American faces now which can

hopefully help others relate and understand their current situation and how to cope.
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OPINION

This book was an amazing read that I highly recommend to anyone that might feel like

they’re stuck or wanting change in their life as this book express the feeling of that perfectly.

Every topic mentioned in this book will be able to relate with anyone and hopefully make other

feel less alone as well. Something I did not like about the book is that they left a huge door open

of unanswered questions. A Lot of issues are mentioned throughout the books that are quickly

looked past. A majority of this issue are focused on Lorena and her fear of her step farther. While

we may not go in depth on her because our main focus is Julia, I just wish we could have learned

more about her and if anything improved for her other than just moving away. I really enjoyed

the topic of sex being included in this book as this really isn’t mention in Latin book or tv that

much and when it is, it’s only praised for the men. This book felt very relatable that the

characters expressed needing to hide things from there family. I grew up hiding every

relationship I had from my parents because of the fear of already being in trouble with them that

hiding it, felt like the best idea. This book was a nice breather as it let me know that the feeling

of needing to hide something so simple like being interested in a boy, was something we all felt,

it wasn’t just me. This book does an excellent job giving a true perspective on the life of a

Mexican American daughter and the issues they might face. This book doesn’t just focus on one

topic but instead explores every one that could possibly appear. While some issues are left

without answers, it does also give that realistic feel that you don’t always get an answer in real

life and must come to accept that. I do feel like Julia is almost Erika as they both want to be

writers, and both grew up in Chicago but that’s just a thought.

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Citation

Hartmann, Katie Rivadeneyra, Rocio toro-morn, and Maura I. “A Study of Mexican Immigrant
Mothers and Adolescent Daughters in the Heartland: “Mi mama nada mas me dice que
me cuide mucho” (My mom just tells me to take care of myself a lot)”. Journal of
Latino/Latin American Studies, Vol 8, Issue 1, 2016, 55-76.

Ojeda, Lizette, Castillo, Linda G., Meza, Rocio Rosales and Pina-Watson, Brandy. “Mexican
Americans in Higher Education: Cultural Adaptation and Marginalization as Predictors of
College Persistence Intentions and Life Satisfaction”. Journal of Hispanic Higher
Education, Vol 13, Issue 1, 2013, 3-14.

Sanchez, Erika L. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. New York, Knopf Books for
Young Readers, 2017