Review: Don't Ask Me Where I'm From

 Okay,  I just need you to stop doing whatever you're doing and gaze at the eleganza of a cover. I mean, it's not as fancy and lacey like a lot other novels but this graffiti style artwork is so awesome. Maybe I'll do some artwork like that. It looks so damn pretty. 

Fifteen-year-old Liliana is fine, thank you very much. It’s fine that her best friend, Jade, is all caught up in her new boyfriend lately. It’s fine that her inner-city high school is disorganized and underfunded. It’s fine that her father took off again—okay, maybe that isn’t fine, but what is Liliana supposed to do? She’s fifteen! Being left with her increasingly crazy mom? Fine. Her heathen little brothers? Fine, fine, fine. But it turns out Dad did leave one thing behind besides her crazy family. Before he left, he signed Liliana up for a school desegregation program called METCO. And she’s been accepted.

Being accepted into METCO, however, isn’t the same as being accepted at her new school. In her old school, Liliana—half-Guatemalan and half-Salvadorian—was part of the majority where almost everyone was a person of color. But now at Westburg, where almost everyone is white, the struggles of being a minority are unavoidable. It becomes clear that the only way to survive is to lighten up—whiten up. And if Dad signed her up for this program, he wouldn’t have just wanted Liliana to survive, he would have wanted her to thrive. So what if Liliana is now going by Lili? So what if she’s acting like she thinks she’s better than her old friends? It’s not a big deal. It’s fine.

But then she discovers the gutting truth about her father: He’s not on one of his side trips. And it isn’t that he doesn’t want to come home…he can’t. He’s undocumented and he’s been deported back to Guatemala. Soon, nothing is fine, and Lili has to make a choice: She’s done trying to make her white classmates and teachers feel more comfortable. Done changing who she is, denying her culture and where she came from. They want to know where she’s from, what she’s about? Liliana is ready to tell them.

QUICK THOUGHTS AND REVIEW: 3.8/5, AS MUCH AS I LIKED THE BOOK IT FELT LIKE IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORKED MORE UPON.

Possible Trigger Tags:

1. Racism

2. Deportation

3. Bullying

4. Racial Slurs

5. Mentions of segregations

6. Minor mentions of sexism

7. Mentions of abuse and alcoholism

 

WHAT DID I FEEL ABOUT THE  BOOK'S: 

1. Writing Quality: The writing quality is good, but it lacks that X factor to keep me hooked. It certainly flows well and it has no drag, but it feels very bland or crass to me. It certainly is an interesting story, and it certainly had potential, but it feels so bland it was hard to get invested into the story.

2.  Character Development: Liliana Cruz is 15, and she seems as normal as any teenager about her age could be. She's smart, she knows what she's doing, but at the same time she's hit by a sudden wave of emotions and she's confused about what is happening around her, especially about her dad being deported back to Guatemala. She's overwhelmed and she's struggling to keep it together inside her, but she tries to just for the sake of her mother. She has this writing journal where she writes stories and vents out. And it all feels relatable because at some point I was this angsty and overwhelmed teenager and my life was falling apart. I'm still angsty and overwhelmed and still a teenager, except my teen years are about to end soon. And she shows immense development fitting into her new environment, speaking up for herself and making new friends. Somewhere inside of her something knows she's going to be okay while another part doubts it. To be honest, she does seem relatable more than most teenagers I've read about.

Other characters aren't highlighted as much, and it's sad because I'd  have liked to know more about them.

3. Couldn't put it down- Ness: 8/10, it's a short book and it finishes pretty quick, like 300 pages ish, would be done in one sitting.

4. Intellectual Depth: The book is about a Latinx girl, trying to fit in an almost all-White school. Her life at home apparently seems to be falling apart and it feels like she's losing her best friend too. And yet, she has to go through a day like a normal person without letting anyone else know about the storms that she has to face inside her mind or outside. On a certain level, I understand about not being able to fit in a new place because it seems like there's always a system that keeps that place in check and it feels like you're disrupting the system by being a new variable in it. And people can be really really mean when you're new. It's like you're bait for those people or a plaything. It's scary and it fucks up your mind.

5. Plot: It kind of feels like that this book could have been written in a much better way. It's supposed to show the struggles of a Latinx teen in an all-white school. I feel like that it just skims over the surface just by showing what happens in the academic curriculum and the assembly for once. But otherwise, I don't see any struggles of being separated from a majority. It feels like Lili is narrating the story as an outsider instead of actually being a part of it because it's all on surface level. There is no depth to the story or the actions that are happening around and I feel sad, because there could have been so much more to the story. A lot of arcs and moments that could have been worked upon were missed out and simply, as much as I love how Liliana's dad returns home, I do not like the ending.

OVERALL, A MEH READ, I definitely expected more from this book.