Hello all, and welcome to the Book Bonfire! Before we toast some s’mores, sing kumbaya, and throw all those loathsome Harry Potter books into the firepit while praying to the Lord that our souls be cleansed, we will be discussing I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez! I hope everyone brought their dog-eared, highlighted, well-loved copies, because I’m not going to fucking hold your hand through our discussion. Go back to the mess hall and jerk your dick if you’re not going to take this shit seriously.

Now then, now that 45 of you just left, the rest of us can continue! I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter follows 15-year-old Julia Reyes’ first-person point of view as she navigates her miserable, cloistered teenage existence following the gruesome, sudden death of her older sister Olga. Her overbearing mother and emotionally absent father contribute to Julia’s mental unravelling as she feels permanently stuck in her shitty apartment in a shitty part of Chicago on a day-to-day basis, yearning to be free to pursue her ambitions of writing and poetry instead of following the suffocating go-nowhere path her family has already mapped out for her. We watch the miserable and angry Julia slowly fall into a depression so deep that she attempts suicide. Things work out in the end, though!

Throughout, Julia slowly discovers that Olga might not have been as pure and innocent and boring as her parents always thought. After finding some weird, uh, trinkets in Olga’s bedroom, Julia becomes obsessed with understanding more about her sister than she ever bothered to before while she was still alive. Some real shady stuff, man. Some real in-love-with-a-50-year-old-married-man-stuff. But hey, I’ll let you read and find out for yourself! Ha! I warned you about spoilers.

BOOK BONFIRE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS!

Julia has taken to sleeping in Olga’s bed at night after her parents have gone to sleep. As she lies in her sister’s bed, restless, Julia sifts through the pillowcase and finds a folded piece of paper… On the back, it says “I love you”. Confused, yet intrigued, Julia quietly goes through Olga’s bedroom and finds skimpy lingerie and a hotel key. How does Julia’s discovery shape or reshape your impressions of Olga? How is it possible two sisters lived under the same roof, yet didn’t really know each other? How do family dynamics affect relationships between members of the family?
A note that says “I love you”? Skimpy lingerie? A hotel key? This can only mean one thing… Olga was working evenings as the best and most expensive call girl this side of the Chicago River!

Or, she was an affair partner! That last part is true. Julia confronted the guy in question and he was all like “A BLOO BLOO BLOO I’M SORRY YOUR SISTER WAS SQUISHED BY A SEMI-TRUCK, BUT I LOVED HER AND HERE’S A COOKIE.” Now, the thing about Olga is that her parents thought she was the Perfect Mexican Daughter because they were both under the impression that she stayed home locked in her room all day eating stale tortillas and knitting and never argued or complained. She helped around the house and had one boring friend and maybe some day she’ll marry some convenience store clerk and have seventeen children.

I never liked Olga anyway. Based on all descriptions she seemed woefully dull. The affair made her more interesting, honestly. Like, that’s a bombshell of a secret to keep and she took that secret with her to the grave. But then Julia exhumed that metaphorical corpse and now she has to deal with the knowledge?

I don’t think I answered any of those questions at all! Sorry.

In Chapter 9, we start to see Julia unravel: “I’ve always had trouble being happy, but now it feels impossible.” “Sometimes I feel so lonely and hopeless that I don’t know what to do.” Though she thinks of herself as strong, Julia acknowledges that “I’m missing something… but I can’t figure it out.” In Mexican culture, seeking mental help is taboo, a sign of weakness. Do you think she knows she needs support? Does Julia seek help or tough it out?
I can relate with this as someone who isn’t shy to let the whole internet know that I tried a whole meth lab full of prescription drugs and finally found one that actually worked after about six months. Julia had to slit her wrists to get some of that good medication. All I did was sleep and bitch and moan.

Julia kind of knows she needs support, but she gets mad at everyone who tries to support her. She just didn’t know what kind of support she needed until it was too late. Obviously, she needs to get the hell out of that damn apartment and away from her suffocating mother, but college is too far away in the future to just tough it out. A LITTLE BIT OF BOTH, THEN.

I suppose her best bet, unfortunately, was her rich, white boyfriend Connor. He could see outside the perspective of Mexican culture and he seemed to have his head on well enough to goad Julia into seeking help. She just didn’t really let it happen, and their long-distance relationship makes it very hard to really give her whole trust into him. Plus, he’s rich and white, and part of her didn’t like that. I didn’t like it! Fuck rich white guys.

Julia’s character is complicated. On one hand she is a feisty feminist with a sharp tongue, quick wit, and intellectual curiosity. Yet Julia is mean, spiteful, belligerent, and intolerant, and feels life is unfair to her. What do you think about Julia? Is it hard to like her? Do you feel she’s truly the victim in this story?
I thought it was very easy to like her. I think it’s because she is a feisty feminist with a sharp tongue, quick wit, and intellectual curiosity, yet she is mean, spiteful, belligerent, and intolerant! Call me crazy. I suppose your own mileage may vary.

By the end, of course, Julia realizes not everything is in black and white. Sure, she may be selfish, but she has a reason to be. She’s 15 years old for fuck’s sake. Plus, her older sister was crushed by a truck, in case you forgot about the thing I already mentioned. I would imagine that it’s hard to keep your cool under the circumstances.

Obviously, Amá and Apá are the downplayed victims of the story. Since everything is from Julia’s point of view, it’s not obvious from her perspective and one wonders if it was even going to get addressed in depth. And it does, at the end, after Julia’s mini Mexico sabbatical. Amá finally softens up and backs off, and Apá says more to her than he had in years. The trip to her father’s childhood home gave her some perspective, and after learning that her mother was raped trying to cross the border, well, Julia backs off a little bit. This backing off brings them closer together! Irony!

Julia wakes up in a hospital bed at the beginning of Chapter 17. “I’ve never been very good at life, but, man, was this a stupid thing to do,” she thinks. How evident was it to you that this would be the answer to her pain and hopelessness? Do you think Julia truly believes what she did was a stupid thing?
Julia’s descent into depression was believably gradual, and her feelings of suffocation and helplessness did come to a head. I was surprised when she tried to kill herself, though. Cut down, not across, Julia! You didn’t really mean it.

She knows she did a stupid thing, but you can tell it was for the attention. She was desperate for ANY evidence that showed that her parents actually cared about her, and something as drastic as a suicide attempt would be pretty damning evidence in either direction.

But it worked! You can’t say it didn’t work! She got happier from that moment forward! What is the lesson that we learned, kids?

FINAL THOUGHTS

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter was a fun read! I’m about as white-bread as they come, and my older sister wasn’t killed by a truck at the age of 22, but I was able to empathize with Julia all the same. Part of that was our shared cravings to be a writer. Also, Chicago, I suppose. I live in Humboldt Park, though. She lived in Bullshittown.

Also, I was constantly laughing at her snarky grumpiness. That was exactly me at her age, and it’s a good look when you’re a teenager. Not so much at 35, but I’m still learning.