Ivan’s Comments (group member since Jun 24, 2019)

Ivan’s comments from the Multicultural Library EDGTE 480 group.

I am Not your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez
Rating 5/5

It has been a long time since I read a novel all the way until the end. This book is very touching, the author Erika L. Sanches lives in Chicago. Through this book she tells the life of young girl Julia who is pursuing to live a life outside of the expectations of what her ethnicity and gender define it to be. Julia lives in an area of Chicago where violence is very common. The whole plot revolves around Julia's sister's death. Her sister Olga was the perfect daughter to her parents, which leads to say she was the perfect Mexican daughter. The reason I chose this book was because it has a Mexican character, and through this character a lot of different themes are presented, which are parallel to the themes presented in Gage Park.

One of themes is Christian beliefs, Gage Park has a high rate of teen pregnancy and violence, therefore families encourage their kids to attend church in order to walk along the "right path". Julia is faced a struggle of believing in her church when Julia’s mother is Catholic and attends prayer meetings at her church. Julia says Amá (her mom) thinks everyone is a Satanist. She and her mother frequently argue about faith because Julia feels the Catholic church hates women and wants them to be weak and ignorant.

I would use this book in junior/senior class setting because it does use strong language when discussing sexuality. Regardless, I feel that this book sparks a lot of discussion in predominantly Hispanic classroom (which is what I will be teaching). Reason being because, from my experience Mexican parents do have a lot of expectations from their kids, given that they migrated to the U.S to give them a better future. Not a lot of young adults know how to deal with these expectations, therefore this book can serve as a way to filter out those emotions.
I want to end this review with a very funny quote from the book

“As much as I get sick of eating Mexican food every single day of my life, if heaven existed, I know it would smell like fried tortillas.” (I am not you perfect Mexican daughter, Sanchez).