Cinnamon Girl: letters found inside a cereal box

by Juan Felipe Herrera

I want
to see
what is
on the other side of the dust

When the towers fall, New York City is blanketed by dust. On the Lower East Side, Yolanda, the Cinnamon Girl, makes her manda, her promise, to gather as much of it as she can. Maybe returning the dust to Ground Zero can comfort all the voices. Maybe it can help Uncle DJ open his eyes again.

As tragedies from her past mix in the air of an unthinkable present, Yolanda searches for hope. Maybe it's buried somewhere in the silvery dust of Alphabet City.

Genres: Young Adult, Poetry, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Teen, New York

176 pages, Library Binding

Published August 9, 2005

About the author

Juan Felipe Herrera is the only son of Lucha Quintana and Felipe Emilio Herrera; the three were campesinos living from crop to crop on the roads of the San Joaquín Valley, Southern California and the Salinas Valley. Herrera's experiences as the child of migrant farmers have strongly shaped his work, such as the children's book Calling the Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats award in 1997. He is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist who draws from real life experiences as well as years of education to inform his work. Community and art has always been part of what has driven Herrera, beginning in the mid-seventies, when he was director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, an occupied water tank in Balboa Park converted into an arts space for the community.
Herrera’s publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children in the last decade with twenty-one books in total.

Reviews

[Book Concierge · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the book jacket When the towers fall, New York City is blanketed by dust. On the lower East Side, Yolanda makes her manda, her promise, to gather as much of it as she can. As tragedies from her past mix in the air of an unthinkable present, Yolanda searches for hope. Maybe it’s buried somewhere in the silvery dust of Alphabet City.

My reactions
This slim volume is told entirely in free verse. The poems are visceral and disturbing, emotional and moving. And yet, I felt somehow removed from Yolanda and her pain.

I think part of that was because Herrera does not give us a linear timeline. He skips back and forth, starting in a hospital room where Yolanda and her mother await news of her uncle DJ’s condition after he’s been pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center collapse, then moving back and forth in time to give the reader the story of this family’s background, their struggles and triumphs, joys and heartbreaks. The changes in tone, voice and time frame kept me off balance.

A couple of stylistic choices do help the reader. Different fonts are used depending on whether Yolanda is relating what is happening in “real time,” reading an old letter from her uncle, or copying an earlier poem or school assignment. Additionally, he includes a date stamp on most entries, which helps determine the time frame.

Nevertheless, what does come through loud and clear is the emotion being felt. From the typical teen lament of “no one understands me” to the joy and freedom of a new friendship, to the very real fear of having lost someone in a tragic accident, Herrera’s Cinnamon Girl will resonate with many readers.

[Q_Ayana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cinnamon Girl tells the story of Yolanda, a young girl whose family has been affected by the September 11th attacks. Written in free verse poetry, the reader gets a glimpse of experiencing and overcoming tragedy through the poems and letters that Yolanda has kept inside a cereal box. It reiterates the strength of family pulling together during hard times. The language is descriptive and expressive, generating great imagery and allowing the reader to empathize with the characters. The story is most appropriate for older children in middle school to high school grades.

[Izabella White · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good it was just a really long poem!!

[Kris Dersch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I would have liked this less had I read it at a different time, but today, on the 9/11 anniversary, it gave me the feels I wanted it to give me.
It is sort of a poetry/novel in verse hybrid...it lacks some of the linear structures I would expect a novel in verse to have but is more of a narrative than your average poetry collection. It walks to the edge of magical realism without quite going there and that is not my thing but I didn't mind it so much today, nor did I mind the kind of disjointed all over the place timeline. It captured where Yolanda's head was in those days after 9/11 while her uncle is still hospitalized, and other trauma in her life we learn about as it goes on.
Secondary characters could have used more fleshing out, particularly the two best friends, but being in Yolanda's head I think captured the feeling of confusion and pain that surrounds the time period very well...better than other 9/11 books I have read written in a similar time.

[Thea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt compelled to write this review because I saw many who said they found this book confusing; Don't read this like a novel, it is poetry. I loved how this collection of poems flowed between reality and her letters to Uncle Beto/DJ. Through the letters we see the close relationship Yolanda/ Carnelita and Uncle Beto have. He is her mentor, supporter, critic and sounding board. We also learn through her letters of her wild past and the loss of a close freind that still haunts her. In the poems set in reality we see Yolanda struggling with isolation, lonliness and bullying at school; her only freind Rezza, an immigrant, is also shunned. Yolonda starts to unravel after Uncle Beto's accident as she trys to find a way to take control and not feel so helpless. A beautiful collections of poems that take you through a young girl's pain.

[April Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read other books in verse before, but I just couldn't seem to get this one.

[Jay]

1CCinnamon Girl 1D is a poem that reads like a story. Of course, the author Juan Felipe Herrera must have been compelled to provide an interesting narrative 13 the poem is 152 pages long! Guau! This story about a young Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx sucked me right in. The twin towers have just been brought down, and Herrera 19s main character Yolanda is dealing with the tragedy in her own way. Her uncle is dying, and her crack head friends are headed in the same direction. The poem reflects how a young girl from Iowa makes sense of the insanity and chaos that is New York City.
Like the author, Yolanda has a poetic heart. She collects dust in bags to remember the death and destruction. She keeps letters stuffed inside a cereal box to remember love and affection. 1CCinnamon Girl 19s rhythm and weird imagery drew me deep inside the poem. Cinnamon Girl 19s sense of hope kept me reading to the end.
But here is something I 19d like to add today. Juan Herrera was one of my professors at UC Riverside. And somewhere in the semester he described his experience of writing this extended poem. He put his heart and soul into the creation of something that would make sense of a surreal moment in time. When he was finished writing, he had over 200 pages that he didn 19t know what to do with. His agent didn 19t know either. They were both emotionally involved with the subject, but at the same time they knew that it would never sell in the present form.
After a long and feisty deliberation, it was the agent that pulled out the scissors and cut 50 pages off the top. For the time and effort that Juan put into this project, he must have felt like someone was lopping of an appendage. But, that 19s where Cinnamon Girl begins, on page 52 26
I 19ll never forget the look on Juan 19s face when he told us this story about the amputation of his poem. He just kind of shrugged his shoulders to let us know that was the business we work in.
I think that moment provided me with one of the most important lessons in all my time in the program. Sometimes you just have to let things go.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Age of Readership:

12-15 years

Genre:

Novel in verse

Diversity:

Puerto Rican/Latinos

Personal Reponse:

I was very confused when I started this book. I had to reread a few of the poems because I didn't quite understand his style. Once I got the hang of it, though, it was an excellent book. It is one that made me shed a tear. It brings together narrative poems that keep the story moving, letters from Yolanda's past that describe how she got to where she currently is, and Yolanda's poetry to make this story unique, interesting, and something that pulls the heartstrings just enough.

Curricular or programming connections:

9/11 victims and their families are shown clearly in this book. It even delves into the problems American Middle Easterners had to deal with. Growing up in violent, drug-infested neighborhoods are also shown in this book. Teens dealing with family trauma. This book could be helpful with any of these issues.

[Shiya]

i think this is an okay book so far because its mostly like its a poetry book to say. At first wen i started t read it i didn't really like it. Now hat i started to read this book for a little while but now that read it for a little i kinda like not fully grown to it yet. I'm not really into it yet like you think i am there's no excitement yet for me. My expectations are for some mystery an crime or something i just hope this book isn't dull like most books. I mean the tittle is so catchy. The plot i really cant tell you cause i just started reading the book ,but although its sounds dull i want to see what this story has in hold for me.the girls name kind catches you in the beginning cause there name is Yolanda which is a very weird name. All i know is that it takes place in New York City on the lower east side.

[Hannah Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a class. It is beautifully styled, written in poetry.

I would recommend this to all teens, especially those who are working through loss. This book addresses loss and discusses different coping mechanisms, many of which are bad. This book is beautifully written and could be enjoyed by a large audience.

In a classroom, this book is good for discussing the nature of friendships. Other topics for class conversations would include bullying, loss, and family relationships. This book also offers insight into cultural differences and is an interesting take on 9/11.

Content warning:
-Drugs
-Violence (death and beating)
-Brief sexually suggestive remarks

[Hilary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll probably be unpopular for saying this in the Goodreads world, but I just didn't love this. It was good, but not great. However, I must also remember that it's written as free verse and is not a novel, so it shouldn't READ like a novel, which maybe I wished it would. It is an interesting book and I would like to teach with it, but as a pick up and enjoy the read, this might not be it. It deals with several tough issues--September 11th, loss, the immigrant experience, drugs--in a lyrical way, but it takes some focusing to stay in it at times. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is written in free verse. It is about a girl named Yolanda who's uncle was injured when the towers fell on Sept. 11. Yolanda spends her time gathering up the dust from the towers to quiet the voices. She is very close to her uncle. There are letters in a cereal box that she wrote back and forth to her uncle and they are being read every so often. A definite Latino theme in this book is extended family.

This book has upper level content and would be suitable for junior high to high school.

[Alyse Liebovich · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping to use this book as another example for students to check out to learn more about how teenagers reacted to 9/11, but I had a hard time following the storyline, and I'm not sure how much the free verse format would appeal to students if it's already kind of unclear what's going on in the narration.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serendipitous that I was reading a book on the topic of 9/11 around the anniversary of those events. Cinnamon Girl is the story on a young Puerto Rican girl and her famiy centering on her uncle that is injured on that fateful day. The story is told through the letters of Yolanda and her Uncle DJ and Yolanda's poetry. It is an interesting twist on the events that unfolded that day in 2001.

[Erica Cohen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cinnamon Girl is a free poetry book that tells the story of a girl. Yolanda who has been affected by the September 11 attacks. The book is filled with descriptive and expressive language. However, the book was confusing and I had to reread several times to comprehend. The book jumps frequently between past and present. The book is unclear and inferences have to be made from cover to cover.

[Rachel]

To begin, I do not appreciate poetry in the way it should be appreciated. This was no different. I found myself stumbling to determine what the author was trying to communicate. I think she visited a tarot card reader, and I think she smoked some kind of drug. But then, in the final twenty pages, the story came alive and I was glad I had stuck with it.

[Dora · Rating 2 out of 5]

2006 Americas Award Winner
A story that takes place during the 9/11 attacks.

A bit confusing because it switches to before the attacks and after.

Quite different than Margarita Engle's perspective writing.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Novel in verse. A girl deals with the death of her uncle post-9/11.

[Zi · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was alright...My copy was an ARC though. It was fine, but didn't really care for it one way or another.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Related to 9/11. The first fiction I've read relating to that. A bit hard to follow.

[Tamara]

No memory of this one.

[Elzbeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kept jumping around between the past and future and present and who was talking. I couldn't finish it.

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great quick read. Different style than I usually read, well written.

[Tammy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was not a fan of this book. It is written in verse, which is fine, but I think it's a little too abstract; I had a hard time following the plot. I would not recommend this book.

[Kelly O’Grady · Rating 1 out of 5]

My mother taught me if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.