I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez

I read it as an: hardback

Source: library

Length: 340 pp

Publisher: Knopf

Year: 2017

Julia is a fairly typical 15 year old – she wants to hang out with her friends, have fun, and get good enough grades to get out of her neighborhood and go away to college when she is old enough. She struggles with depression, though she initially doesn’t realize it, because her parents are oppressive and don’t want her to achieve anything more than to get through high school without getting pregnant, then get married and get a job as a secretary, which is the best job they can think of. To be fair, her dad works in a factory and her mom cleans houses, so working as a secretary would be a big step up to them. However, Julia is highly intelligent and a talented writer; she wants to go to college and be a writer when she grows up, a job neither of her parents understands or supports. The death of her older sister, Olga, which happens before the start of the book, naturally throws her into a deeper depression than she already had been in.

Olga had been the perfect Mexican daughter, according to Julia’s mother. Olga was happy to stay at home forever, never dated, was happy to help her mother clean and cook traditional food. Julia wanted nothing to do with any of these things. After Olga died, Julia discovered that Olga may have had a secret life and makes it her mission to learn what it was. The weight of the secrets she learns becomes too much to bear and it has a terrible impact on Julia’s mental health.

I read this in one sitting and it made me ugly cry. It was so fucking good! There are so many issues wrapped up in this novel. Julia’s parents are undocumented immigrants and, over the course of the story, we learn about their harrowing trip across the border from their home town on Los Ojos in Mexico, the horrible things that happened to them. They were unable to return to Mexico when their parents died because they wouldn’t have been able to return to their home in Chicago or to their children. They work the worst jobs with the worst shifts because their employers know they have them over a barrel. Julia’s dad and his factory coworkers live in constant fear of raids by immigration; it’s pure dumb luck the raids have never happened during any of his shifts. Julia’s mother cleans houses in the rich areas of Chicago and deals with all kinds of abuse from the homeowners, from bored rich housewives hovering and criticizing everything she does to gross old men leering at her.

Julia suffers from depression and anxiety, but she doesn’t know it. She just thinks that she is weird and that nothing she does is good enough to please her mother. She’s a victim of her culture, to a large extent, and of her mother. Depression is not something that her mother understands and she thinks Julia just needs to be happy with her family and go to church more. Oppressing Julia’s need for a creative outlet and showing no interest in things she loves – literature, writing, travel – makes her feel as though she is unseen and unwanted, and understandably so.

Another issue in the book is how homosexuality is dealt with in the Hispanic community. I am not Hispanic, but I know that, traditionally, being gay is not very well tolerated. Readers see that in one of Julia’s friends, a gay boy who is frequently beaten by hi father for being gay.

Being from AZ, I know maybe a tad more about Mexican culture than some, but really I don’t know tons. Reading this book helped me learn more than I expected and for that, I am grateful. I want to learn more.

Overall, this book was sad and enlightening and shines a light on a huge number of issues. I loved it so hard.