I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter Themes

The most potent theme throughout Erika L. Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is that of secrets and lies. As the novel unfolds and Julia digs deeper into the secrets her recently-deceased older sister Olga left behind, she comes face-to-face with more and more unsettling truths about her family’s past. In the end, Sánchez ultimately suggests that some secrets are too painful to share—and that some lies are actually a mercy, meant to…

Julia Reyes is desperate to get out of the working-class Chicago suburb she and her family call home—she dreams of being a famous writer, of seeing the world, and of living all alone in a big, beautiful Manhattan apartment. Julia’s fierce restlessness and boundless ambition, however, are threatened by several factors beyond her control: her overbearing mother’s strict rules, the poverty that boxes her and her family into a shabby apartment and a dilapidated neighborhood…

Julia Reyes and her parents live in a roach-infested apartment in a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. Stomping roaches dead and mopping up their guts is a regular necessity—and outside of the apartment, things are sometimes even worse. Julia must endure threats and harassment from neighborhood men as well as a chronic lack of money for public transportation and food. Her friends from school, Lorena and Juanga, face similar problems…