Julia says she doesn’t want the party-the family doesn’t have the money, and she’s going to be sixteen soon, anyways.
She sits Julia down at the kitchen table and tells her that she’s planning on throwing Julia a quinceañera-a festive celebration which marks fifteen-year-old Latina girls’ transition into womanhood. Julia tells Amá that she needs to get up and get on with her life, and though she initially balks at Julia’s telling her what to do, she does indeed get out of bed, shower, and make some tea. There’s no food in the house, there are roaches everywhere, and Julia’s father will barely look at her. Julia’s best friend Lorena shows up to comfort her, and as Julia hugs her friend, she sees over Lorena’s shoulder a strange man who she assumes is a very distant uncle.Īfter Olga’s funeral, Amá takes to bed and doesn’t get up for several weeks. Though Julia is saddened by her sister’s death, she’s put off by her mother’s crazed emotional display, and by the attention-seeking grieving she sees her nosy aunts engaging in. Amá was supposed to pick Olga up from her job at a medical office on the day of the accident, but when the hotheaded Julia got in trouble at school, Amá was forced to get Julia instead, and so Olga was left to take the bus home. Olga, who was always the prim and proper “perfect Mexican daughter” and Amá and Apá’s favorite, was recently run over by a semi on the streets of Chicago while crossing the road to transfer buses. The novel opens as fifteen-year-old Julia Reyes and her parents, whom she calls Amá and Apá, are looking into the casket of Julia’s recently-deceased older sister, Olga. It has already found a place in high school classrooms across the country, and is now being adapted for film by America Ferrera. Sánchez drew from her own adolescence as the ambitious child of immigrant parents to create the character of Julia, a whip-smart, tempestuous teen who is quick to declare that she dislikes “most people and most things.” Her authentic voice made the book, published in 2017, an instant hit with readers and a finalist for the National Book Award. In Olga’s absence, Julia’s parents are quick to find fault with just about everything she does, and the teen struggles to juggle their expectations with her own grief and mental health needs. But after a tragic accident leads to Olga’s death, Julia is left alone with her family. That’s because, unlike 15-year-old Julia, Olga wore modest clothes, spent evenings with her parents and didn’t have grand ambitions that involved going away to college and leaving her family behind. Julia’s older sister was the “perfect” Mexican daughter.
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