New Book Wednesday

nobody@vox.com(jessielme) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:04:58 -0700

I still haven't finished Fall On Your Knees because I told my little sister that I'd read Haters with her first. We both finished it and now she wants me to read this book with her:

The Dirty Girls Social Club

It's also by Alisa Valdes-Rodrigues, and it's even better than Haters and I'm only on page 23. It's dense with American cultural references and information about being a Latino in the US. Did you take that class in college? I did. Latinos are not homogenous. They can come from Cuba, Puerto Rico, or even Arizona, with ancestors tracing back to Native Americans. Sometimes they can have one latino parent and one european parent, (duh). And some of them hate being refered to as Spanish, hispanic, or Mexican. Why? Because they may not actually BE any of those things. Spanish implies "from Spain." But what if your ancestors were Native Americans and Africans? Then you aren't really spanish are you? And Hispanic is a name that white people came up with - many Latinos just prefer to be called Latino.

Being someone who studied Spanish in highschool and college, and having learned this stuff, it's nice to see it presented so seamlessly in a novel that is so popular (kind of in the vein of Sex in the City). My little sister likes it because she's actually Latina. Lucky girl.

An interesting fact: If you read the Q & A about Alisa Valdes-Rodrigues on her website as well as the debates with other writers on her blog, you can see that she really doesn't like to be referred to as a Latina writer. When reading her books I had trouble understanding why - her books have Latina protagonists and themes.... But when I read her arguments about the label, it really does make a lot of sense.

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New Book Wednesday