Current Reading: With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

 

I am currently reading With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo. One of the things I like about the book is that it shows how the LatinX experience is a complicated one. Consider this passage:

I've lived my whole life having people question what race I am. ... But when people from a different neighborhood first meet me, they wonder why I don't fit certain modes. The Latina grandmothers at the Papi store tsk-tsk when they ask me a question in Spanish and I answer with my chopped up tongue, or worse, in English. And I don't have enough skills to tell them 'Buela didn't raise me speaking much Spanish. I can understand a lot of it because of her, but English is the language I learned at school and watched on TV and, for the most part, even the one we speak at home.I try not to be self-conscious about how little Spanish I know, but some days it feels like not speaking Spanish automatically makes me a Bad Boricua. One who's forgotten her roots (pp 68-69).