I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

by Erika L. Sánchez

Her perfect sister died. Now Julia has to be the good one.

$15 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.

Julia's sister Olga was perfect — obedient, modest, dutiful, everything their Mexican immigrant parents needed her to be. Then Olga dies in an accident and Julia, the difficult one, the one who reads too much and wants too much and refuses to shrink, is left to carry the grief of a family that can't understand her. Sánchez writes about depression, female desire, immigrant family expectations, and the specific weight of being the daughter who was supposed to be less — with a fury and humor that refuses to apologize for any of it. The book is frequently challenged and banned, which tells you exactly who it makes uncomfortable and why. The most honest YA novel about what it costs a first-generation Mexican American girl to want a life that isn't organized entirely around her family's survival — and the one that most completely refuses to make that wanting shameful.

Related Viewing

Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

Like Water for Chocolate(1992)

dir. Alfonso Arau

Forbidden love, served through food.

In early-1900s Mexico, Tita is forbidden by family tradition from marrying the man she loves, so she pours her longing into the food she cooks — food that carries her emotions, sometimes literally, into everyone who eats it. Adapted from Laura Esquivel's novel.

Why it’s here: Punk in making a kitchen the site of rebellion — Tita's cooking becomes the one language her mother can't control or silence. Pedagogical in showing how inherited "duty" polices women's desire generation after generation, and what it costs to break that chain.

More ↓

Letterboxd ↗

Never Let Me Go(2010)

dir. Mark Romanek

Raised for a purpose they never chose.

Three friends grow up together at an idyllic English boarding school, slowly coming to understand — and largely accept — the specific, limited purpose their lives were engineered to serve. Adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's novel.

Why it’s here: Punk in its quiet, devastating restraint — no uprising, no escape plot, just people trained from childhood not to fight their fate. Pedagogical in showing how a society justifies using some lives for others' benefit, one small acceptance at a time.

More ↓

Letterboxd ↗

More (2)

Same pattern, different era

Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.

milk and honey

Rupi Kaur

The poems that gave survivors their words.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

Nineteen Minutes

Jodi Picoult

The novel that asks who made the shooter.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

I Must Say

Martin Short

Martin Short: chaos in a bow tie.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

M Train

Patti Smith

A love letter to lost time and black coffee.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

Flip the lens

Same country. Now hear it from the other side.

El Narco

Ioan Grillo

Mexico

The drug war by someone who stayed long enough.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

My Mexico

Diana Kennedy

Mexico

Fifty years of Mexican kitchens before they're gone.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

Prayers for the Stolen

Jennifer Clement

Mexico

Girls raised to disappear before the cartel finds them.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

The Daughters of Juárez

Teresa Rodríguez

Mexico

Mothers refusing to let their daughters be statistics.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

For the family bookshelf

Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.

Carmela Full of Wishes

Matt de la Peña

A dandelion wish and everything it holds.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

Each Little Bird That Sings

Deborah Wiles

She grew up in a funeral home. She thought she understood death.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

I'll Give You the Sun

Jandy Nelson

Twins. Three years. Something broke them apart. Both of them tell it.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST

The Astonishing Color of After

Emily X.R. Pan

Taiwan

Her mother died. She became a bird. Leigh goes to Taiwan to find her.

✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST