I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

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.