I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter Symbolism

In the novel, I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, by Erika L. Sánchez, the author employs symbolism and conflict to show that holding universal expectations for people with alternate life paths causes strain on relationships, embracement of identities, and mental health. The author utilizes the symbol of food and hunger, with the main character Julia. The way Julia craves food symbolizes the effects of a lack in personal freedoms. After Julia has an argument with her mother, Amá, she walks alone around the city of Chicago past her strict curfew: “I wish I had a few dollars for a cup of hot chocolate, but I barely have enough to get back on the bus. I’m tired of being broke. I’m tired of feeling like the rest of the world always gets to

This doesn’t feel like a life; it feels like a never-ending punishment.” (Sánchez 210). The symbol of Julia’s hunger for unaffordable food embodies her dream to explore a different take on life. Erika Sánchez promotes the theme by using Julia's family pressures to represent how expectations can negatively impact the happiness in one’s identity. It causes this character to struggle in various aspects of her mental health, including depression and a suicide attempt. The author also uses the symbol of the quinceanera to depict Julia’s feelings of internal disconnection within herself. At the party, Amá confronts Julia about an unfriendly response she previously states to her aunt: “Amá just shakes her head. ‘You know, Julia, maybe if you knew how to behave yourself, to keep your mouth shut, your sister would still be alive. Have you ever thought about that?’ She finally says it. She says what her big, sad eyes were telling me all along.” (Sánchez 162). The quinceanera represents the ‘perfect’ qualities of Julia's family values and its effects on the characters happiness in times of conformity. The expectations these symbols involve portray the problematic stresses on true identities and

Life without writing doesn’t feel worth living to me. I don’t know how I’m going to make it to graduation because I feel like a husk of a person these days. Some of those poems Amá destroyed I had worked on for years, and now they’re gone. Poof. Just like that. I’ll never see them again. The one thing I loved most in life has been taken away from me” (Sánchez 208). Erika Sanchez shows the readers the importance of respecting other people's life interests by utilizing conflict in the book that acts on the opposite. The character Julia faces internal conflicts, surrounding feelings of resentment and guilt towards Olga. As she discovers various ways Olga hides the details of her contradicting expectations, she becomes upset at the hypocrisy of the situation. The character Julia conveys, “My whole life I’ve been considered the bad daughter, while my sister was secretly living another life, the kind of life that would shatter Amá into tiny pieces. I don’t want to be mad at Olga because she’s dead, but I am. ‘Goddamn it, Olga,’ I mutter under my breath,” (Sánchez