I Am Perfect Enough

What are books? To a reader’s definition, it is a portal to escape from reality and the troubles of our world. We could be the character, or an unknown side character watching the protagonist face their problems or fighting the dragon in the fantasy world to save the princess and the kingdom.

But, when you have a book that somehow places you in the eyes of someone close to you, it really does make you understand the world around them before you. There was one book that really did force me to see this from the eyes of Julia from “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter” by Erika L. Sanchez. In the eyes of Julia, I saw a little bit of myself and a bit of my mom.

Potential spoiler warning

For those that do not know, this book follows the main character, sixteen-year-old Julia who is trying to bring the family back together after the sudden death of her older sister, Olga, who happened to be the perfect sister in the family since she was great with the housework working alongside with her mom, got a job at a doctor’s office as a receptionist and comes home every day after college. After her sister’s passing, Julia dug up something about Olga that may look as if she was not precisely the perfect daughter after all.

Tea might be spilled here, but honestly, I don’t care; heh, maybe this is the Julia in me. For those that do not know me, I am half-Latino, half-caucasian; a mix or a “half-breed” which I’ve been called a few times in my lifetime, and sometimes I was ashamed of it because I would never be a full race like my friends or my husband, but I’ve put that behind me. Anyway, there were just some things that I felt quite connected with Julia. I said quite a few times that I wasn’t perfect because I can’t speak Spanish well unlike the other Latinos, but I still try. I’m at a point where I can understand it, but not speak it. That alone made me automatically say that I won’t be a perfect half-Mexican daughter because I can’t speak Spanish. But, I try.

Julia did want to work in a nice place, but she didn’t want to work at the front desk of a doctor’s office just like Olga. Her father always said to get a good education so she is not “working like a donkey like me.” I understood that side of pleads to work in a job that doesn’t require a lot of standing or working really hard, not hurting yourself. Growing up, my maternal grandfather and a lot of my great Tios would always tell me that getting an education was so important. During their younger days in the hot heat near Laredo, Texas, my grandfather and his family would work out in the fields from dawn to dusk. I’ve never been to Texas in my life, but understanding where Laredo is and what the usual temperature is on a summer day, I can believe it. Working in an office with A/C, I felt like, was the dream of the older generations from those in Spanish families, not just Mexican families. When I wasn’t in classes at college, I would work in production lines in manufacturing companies and it was not the ideal place to work for my future. Don’t get me wrong - if I was working in a manufacturing building where I was set to be at an office and if I needed to go on a production floor that didn’t last for more than five minutes, then it would be a set dream for them.

That was my point of view, let’s see if I can move on to my mom’s point of view. I love you, Mom.

My mom is the oldest of four siblings (the youngest passed away in a car accident at the age of seventeen). She was the only female. My mom would tell me things that she would do as a kid. I think because of the relationships she had with her siblings and my grandparents, it was really hard for her to stay home. She was always go, go, go. She would come home from school, do homework, get a bite to eat, and leave to go swimming, hang out with friends, play sports, whatever it was she was doing. Sometimes she got a little bit rambunctious for her own good, but it’s what made her who she is today. I’m not too sure exactly what was going on but it seems that the relationship between her and my grandmother wasn’t necessarily tight, unlike the relationship I have with my mom; I think it’s a generation gap.

When mom got older, it seemed a lot of things changed and attention didn’t really fall on my mom when it was needed. Not saying my mom was by any means someone who said “Give me attention now”, but when mom needed my grandparents, it was heard, but no action was really done. Most of the attention went to the boys; again, I don’t know if it’s a generation or a nurture thing. I think it made my mom feel like she wasn’t perfect, but I’m not my mother, so I don’t know if that was really important to her or not. But, I think I understand when the attention is on one sibling, all that focus goes to the successful one, and the others are not really left out, but probably in a situation where the parent would ask, “Why can’t you be more like, blah blah?” Which, is a toxic phrase to use from parent to child; I felt this phrase was used quite a bit when Julia’s mom was speaking to her. The scene that struck out the most in this toxic trait was when Julia and her mom were in the kitchen, trying to make tortillas by scratch, which is fairly easy to do, but I didn’t do it until in my thirties; it was more convenient to buy them. Anyways, Julia struggled and although I felt like she did them right, her mother was not impressed because it was not perfectly round or it was burnt, but still edible. Julia questioned this because tortillas are meant to be eaten. Her mother just objected, “Olga’s was perfect. Why can’t yours be like hers? She was perfect in the kitchen, at work, at school...”

I felt her mother was trying to shape Julia to become a copycat of her deceased older daughter, Olga, including throwing her a Quinceanera at the age of seventeen, when it is usually celebrated when a young girl turns fifteen, symbolizing her now being a young woman, all because Olga never had one for herself. The thing about shaping your kids - it is just impossible. Sure, you can teach them skills that will help them in the future, but you can’t change your kids to be who they want to be. I’m not sure if this ever happened to me or if it did but it was so long ago that I just don’t remember, I felt it was after graduation from high school, or college for that matter I was able to discover my own style. Parents need to understand that their child’s style reflects on who they are. When my mom was younger, she was always out and hanging out with her cousins or her friends, to just possibly get away with whatever it was that was happening in the house she grew up in. My mom tried to give me a push to talk to kids outside, but I was never a social kid. To this day as an adult, I’m still not social; I’m a very introvert and I like being myself most of the time.

I won’t give the ending away because I don’t want to ruin it, but mostly because I want you as the reader, reading my story to pick this book up because if you are in the same conundrum as Julia, the vibe will hit you so well. Just be prepared for some trigger warnings in this book.

In time, when I got older and finally moved out of my house, my creative and inspired mind allowed me to create my own style and my own person. Sure there are some things that my mom just doesn’t get, but that’s okay. It is important for a child to receive unconditional love from their mother, but ultimately, it is critical for a Latino child to have unconditional love and acceptance from their mother.

The scene Julieta and Mirabel talking in the kitchen is my mom’s favorite scene in the Disney movie, Encanto. She said, “That is you and me, right there. You are perfect, no matter what you do.” Plus, I can vouch because Julieta’s admiration for Mirabel is exactly how my mom acts.