10 Reasons Why We Love Erika L. Sánchez’s Debut Novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

Before I give you a whole bunch of great reasons to pick up Erika L. Sanchez’s novel and read it until there is no more to read, let us pause for a moment to thank J.K. Rowling for writing about young but complex characters in tough situations 20 years ago, opening the door to a whole new breed of young adult literature, which treats our middle readers with same respect as it does adults.

Rowling’s wake has been the path for cult sagas like the Twilight and Hunger Games and for gems like R.J. Palacios’ Wonder. Sanchez is next in line with I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, a coming of age story with a sassy female protagonist. Here are 10 reasons why we’re still obsessed with this remarkable YA book.

3Spanglish Reigns Supreme

As the debate about bilingualism rages on in schools and town halls, Sanchez writes her novel in Spanglish, meaning in the stream of consciousness of her protagonist, without italics. Sanchez knows that many readers won’t readily understand the Spanish. She also knows that close to Americans will, and that number is growing everyday. Sanchez claims “not to care” about whether readers who have access to Spanish, but between deriving meaning from context and practicing empathy, which is the work that fiction encourages us to do, most readers can probably figure it out and learn something in the process.

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