2019 Book 5: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez

Format: Kindle

Date Started: January 26, 2019

Date Finished: January 30, 2019

I identified so much with Julia, the narrator, of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez.  At first glance, you wouldn’t think so.  I live in the suburbs, not a city.  I am not Mexican.  And most importantly, I am definitely not a teenage girl.  Even if it were actually possible, you couldn’t pay me enough money to go back and repeat my teenage years.  They were horrible.  The only thing I hated more than middle school was high school.

Like Julia, I just wanted out.  I wanted to be somewhere new and away from everyone.  Julia wanted to get away from her parents and the pressure she felt from her family.  I wanted to get away from everyone that I had gone to school with my whole life.  And, I had a chip on my shoulder that I was invisible.  I knew I was great, but no one else seemed to which pissed me off.  Julia and I probably carried around the same amount of anger.  Instead of making things better for us, it probably made it worse.  

I like to imagine that Julia finally found the space to explore, grow, and be herself at college.  I hope she learned that the only person she really has to answer to and make happy is herself.  I was well out of college… and grad school…and my twenties before I figured that out.  But once you do, boy, does your whole world open up for the better.