I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter By Erika Sanchez

kSiddharth Shankar

Ms. Hamrick

English 9 HN

20 January 2023

In I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez, fifteen-year-old Julia Reyes comes to terms with the death of her elder sister, Olga, where she finds herself amidst the pressures and expectations of growing up in a Mexican family. As Julia continues to uncover secrets about her sister, she comes face to face with more unsettling truths about her family’s past. Furthermore, while Olga’s secrets disclose progressively, Julia develops many of her own, and her inner conflicts descend into chaos as the relationship with her family and friends fluctuates drastically. Julia’s taciturn and clandestine manner is by far the most significant point in the strength of said relationship

After having met him, Julia becomes fond of him and their relationship evolves to become an intimate one. At some point, “he tells [Julia] his parents are out of town on a business trip this week and…so he wants [her] to come over…” (Sanchez 149). Of course, Julia accepts the invitation from Connor, and therefore, Julia advertently misinforms Amá that “[she is] going downtown to an art gallery” (Sanchez 150). This suggests that matters involving Julia’s family are not as important as those involving external factors. Additionally, every day after Julia gets back from school, Sanchez writes that “[Julia] calls Connor…from… the only remaining pay phone in the city” (157) and that “[he] offers to come meet [her] after school,… but if Amá saw her with him, [she’d] be in even deeper shit” (157). This shows how Julia’s firm relationship with Connor is obscuring the relationship with her family, as expressed by Julia when describing Amá’s supposed opinion of the circumstance. Due to the fact that Julia is willing to lie to her own parents to socialise with Connor, it is undeniable that the relationship between the two greatly affects Julia’s fraudulent

Throughout the text, Julia’s parents do not pay heed to the fact that she thinks she understands what is best for herself. One night, unbeknownst to her Amá and Apá, Julia enters Olga's room and riffles through a box inside a closet. In doing so, Julia discovers lingerie and underwear and it is narrated that “Olga must have done a good job washing them in secret because, if Amá had found them in the laundry, she would have flipped the hell out” (Sanchez 24). Instead of turning in the lingerie to her parents, she elects to keep the clothing hidden; her first act of deceit shown in the book. This implies that Julia does not believe that Amá or Apá will discern the situation, and therefore must keep it a secret, entailing an unstable relationship between them. However, a lie never lasts, and eventually, Amá finds the lingerie, the hotel key, the condoms, and all else. Therefore, soon after Julia is questioned about the items, “[Amá] decides to ransack [Julia’s] room to make sure [she] didn’t have anything else that might be considered scandalous or immoral” (Sanchez 160), virtually deeming “[Julia’s] life over” (Sanchez 156). Consequently, with the commotion of school, home, and social problems, Julia attempts suicide. It was not the fact that Amá searched through Julia’s things that led to the attempted suicide, but it was Julia’s duplicity that was a nexus between the rising conflict