Erika L. Sánchez, from Lessons on Expulsion: Poems; “Amá”

[Text ID: “In One Hundred Years of Solitude, / Márquez wrote that we are birthed / by our mothers only once, but life obligates / us to give birth / to ourselves over and over.”]

Day 10: JOMPBPC: Books And Sunshine

Favorite Books Read in 2020:

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (by Erika L. Sánchez)

“Happiness is a dandelion wisp floating through the air that I can’t catch. No matter how hard I try, no matter how fast I run, I just can’t reach it. Even when I think I grasp it, I open my hand and it’s empty.”

Only…11 days into the month, here’s my May wrap-up! The month was busy, full of summer heat and basketball games, protest and lake visits and lilac…but I found time to read in the midst of it all.

Highlights included the historical fiction landscapes of Horse by Geraldine Brooks, reflections on writing by Elena Ferrante, a vivid memoir by Erika L. Sánchez, and the gorgeous new poetry of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón. 

I also dove into Western African literature for an upcoming Book Riot list, loving books by authors such as Mariama Bâ, Fatou Diome, Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, and more.

RECO OF THE WEEK!

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

Synopsis: 

“Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents’ house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed. But it’s not long before Julia discovers that Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first kiss, first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out. Was Olga really what she seemed? Or was there more to her sister’s story? And either way, how can Julia even attempt to live up to a seemingly impossible ideal?”

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Check out my short review here. 

Add this book to your TBR on Goodreads here.

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Have you read this book? Would you recommend it?

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Happy reading!

"Living with a mental illness is like walking a tightrope in heels. One misstep and you might plummet to your death. The wrong medication can ruin your entire life. Everything is high stakes, but now I know that some of my anxiety is inherited from my mother and all the women who came before us. The mother can always imagine the worst case scenario because all of the terrible shit she's been through as a woman and as an immigrant. She's experienced traumas I'll likely never know about. Expecting the worst is simply a survival mechanism for her. It's taken me most of my life to realize that I too am always looking over my shoulder to see who or what might ruin my life."

- Erika L. Sánchez, Crying in the Bathroom A Memoir

Love, remove your fingers from between

my ribs.

It's true; I cup the grief

as if it were milk, as if it were the last of water spilled.

Quiet, you whistle in my brain like a balloon.

What religion is this? Boredom in spring.

Look at me.

The burn you've left on my arm: wet orchids.

Tomorrow, I will braid you an awful necklace

made of hair.

And when the meaning is all gutted from the day,

I will delight in the sticky mess, in a swirl

so deep I forget myself.

Go on— carve up your favorite parts.

Circles by Erika L. Sánchez

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

Author: Erika L. Sánchez Rating: 2/5 When Julia’s older sister dies in a road accident, her family is grief-stricken and must deal with the repercussions of their grief. Spoilers ahead. Continue reading I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

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Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir

By Erika L. Sánchez.

Erika L. Sánchez, from Lessons on Expulsion: Poems; “Amá”

[Text ID: “Amá, I leave because / I feel like an unfinished / poem, because I’m always trying / to bridge the difference.”]

Day 2: JOMPBPC: Currently Reading

In this fantastic new memoir, Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir, Erika L. Sánchez writes with brutal honesty and a raunchy humor of her traumas and coming-of-age as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago and as a sexually active woman with a big laugh, a propensity towards deep depression, and a tendency to unapologetically want more in everything she does.

Sánchez's stories can be as funny as they are cruel. Her confessions are searing. She writes of a horrific abortion experience, of her battle with painful, overwhelming depression (although she still went to her readings with a brave face, and no one seemed to see through her mask). She draws on Rebecca Solnit and Virginia Woolf, writes of sex and womanhood, of straying from home, of bursting through the boundaries of what she is expected to want, or do. She writes of the power of laughter, of having nothing be off limits, of how her community is ready to roast each other always, and how you learn to grow a thick skin—of how oppressed communities have to find the absurdity, the humor in the world around them, to survive each day. She writes of traveling, of a lifetime of bracing herself to expect the worst, of her tumultuous relationship with her mother and becoming a mother herself. It's a memoir that covers a lot, but whenever it begins to feel like too much, Sánchez sinks you into another bad joke or another painfully hilarious sex misadventure. It's like having one too many drinks with one of your best friends, and she's excited, and occasionally ranting, and cracking jokes at her own expense that are genuinely funny, and cracking jokes at your expense that are...honestly also funny, and in all of that braid, she's telling you her own life story, opening up about the traumas you knew about but didn't know all of, things she can tell you about because of the distance between her then and her now. This book was simply lovely, and made me want to finally pick up I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir comes out July 12 from Viking.

CW sexual assault, alcoholism/binge drinking, abusive relationship, chronic pain, medical dismissal/trauma, self-harm, suicidal ideation, depression, institutionalization, abortion (badly done).

But everywhere, the pain suckles you. Everywhere, you hold its lumpy head to your breast like a saint.

~Erika L. Sánchez

When I am a stranger to my own ruin, twilight reminds me to give alms to my best sins. March: the city is purging in the humility of worms, salt washing from the grasses. When I breathe in, I say thank you. When I breathe out, I say gone, I say garden, I say guns. Three crows devour the dead rat. Look at all that booty, the man mutters and blows me kisses. The sky is worthless and my bulbous ass is always a dinner bell. I run farther, I run with a feather inside my ear, I run from a bird with a broken neck and follow the sound of thawing snow. Aren’t we all boundless though? The way a dream secretes the morning after, the way moths feed on the eyes of fawn. Two and not two— vines that strangle trees never say they’re sorry. I reach the lake with this grateful ache in my throat. And if I say my body is its own crumbling country, if I say I am always my own home—then what does that make me?

A Woman Runs on the First Day of Spring by Erika L. Sánchez

You're never going to be back home again.

I’ll Give You The Sun, Jandy Nelson | Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami | White Oleander, Janet Fitch | Homesick, Noah Kahan | Sick, Jody Chan | Chrystal Light, Erin Hanson | First Dog in Space, Brennig Davies | It's Not A Game/It's Just A Ride, Ride The Cyclone | Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin | “La Cueva”, Lessons on Expulsion, Erika L. Sánchez | Fiery grass against a blue sky, Casey Lee | That's Enough, Let's Get You Home, Will Wood | Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton | Faithful and Virtuous night, Louise Glück | Ask Polly: Help, I'm the Loneliest Person in the World!, Heather Havrilesky | Hammerhead, Penelope Scott