An unforgettable YA debut about two Latina teens growing up in East Oakland as they discover that the world is brimming with messy complexities, perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and Erika L. Sánchez.
Belén Dolores Itzel del Toro wants the normal stuff: to experience love or maybe have a boyfriend or at least just lose her virginity. But nothing is normal in East Oakland. Her father left her family. She’s at risk of not graduating. And Leti, her super-Catholic, nerdy-ass best friend, is pregnant—by the boyfriend she hasn’t told her parents about, because he’s Black, and her parents are racist.
Things are hella complicated.
Weighed by a depression she can’t seem to shake, Belén helps Leti, hangs out with an older guy, and cuts a lot of class. She soon realizes, though, that distractions are only temporary. Leti is becoming a mother. Classmates are getting ready for college. But what about Belén? What future is there for girls like her?
From debut author Carolina Ixta comes a fierce, intimate examination of friendship, chosen family, and the generational cycles we must break to become our truest selves.---from the publisher
368 pages 978-0063287860 Ages 14-17
Keywords: coming of age, Latina, teen pregnancy, depression, friendship, prejudice and racism, family beliefs, Mexican American author, intergenerational trauma, sex, race, dysfunctional family, abandonment, 14 year old, 15 year old, 16 year old
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“I stare at the ceiling. I remember lying here a few months ago, wondering if I would ever be having sex here, if I would be looking at this exact ceiling, if I would feel any lighter afterward. But now that I have, nothing is different.”
“Well I'll keep on moving
Moving on
Things are bound to be improving
These days
One of these days”
– Jackson Browne (1973)
“Everyone, especially Ava, is always telling me how much I’m like my pa.
It makes it hard for me to look at myself.
There are days when I’d rather look at the dried-up blobs of toothpaste in the sink basin than look at my own reflection and hear everyone’s words rattling in between my ears. Everyone saying–you and your dad, always the same, those big brown eyes and that milky skin and that hair like a lion’s, and that mouth, olvidate, you two with those full lips and always something to say–have you heard from him, mija, do you know where he is, how he’s doing?
It makes me paranoid.
People are always saying this is the age where you figure out who you’re becoming. But how can I see myself in someone else’s shadow?
How can they compare me to someone who leaves their family?
How can you be like someone who isn’t even around to compare yourself to?”
Set in present-day Oakland, I found SHUT UP, THIS IS SERIOUS to be an incredibly well-written, thoroughly engaging, and utterly saddening coming-of-age tale. There is a good chance that this book will lead 14 or 15 or 16 year old sexually inexperienced readers to feel a bit less determined and impatient about engaging in sex after reading about the experiences of these two fictional Latina high school girls.
Leti is a stand-out student. If she doesn’t get into Cal (UC Berkeley), she will be utterly crushed. But if she doesn’t, she will undoubtedly have any number of other prestigious universities that will welcome her. But she is now a pregnant high school senior. The father is a fellow high-achieving high school geek. But Quintin is Black. And Leti’s ogre of a father is over the moon racist. And her parents have no idea that their straight and studious little Catholic girl has been sexually active, no less becoming pregnant. But the days are quickly ticking down to when they will notice the rapidly-expanding tummy.
Belén, who narrates the story, is Leti’s long-time best friend. Belén was never a star student, and she has thoroughly disengaged from high school since her philandering father left home–with all the family’s savings–to cohabitate with some woman who is apparently closer to his daughters’ ages. Since his departure, Belén’s mother is going through the motions, but seems to have pretty much checked out. And Belén’s occasional frankness about her father’s disappearance keeps driving a wedge between Belén and both her mother and her big sister Ava.
Amidst an unknown post-high school future, her father’s departure, her best-friend’s pregnancy, and her mother and sister more-or-less not talking to her, Belén is dying to find a boyfriend with whom she can have her turn at experiencing the wonders of sex. But when Belén does find a (college) boy who wants her, the graphic descriptions of her subsequent experiences will surely disabuse many readers of their delusions about the wonders of sex or, at least, sex without serious connection and commitment. I sure hope to hell that readers react by having the good sense to get on the pill or acquire other birth control in advance of becoming sexually involved.
“I pause for a moment, looking to my left and my right. Ava’s salon is a block away, but I can’t go there. Leti’s house is a few blocks up, but I can’t go there either. I feel dizzy. Overwhelmed by former choices that have disintegrated to nothing. Each divot in the concrete is the open palm of an intersection, and I still have nowhere to go.
My heart starts beating faster.
I keep running, slicing through the people in Fruitvale Village. I duck into the BART station, my heels slamming against the turnstile when I hop over it. I climb the stairs two at a time, a train approaching right when I get to the platform. I don’t read the overhead sign to see where it’s going. I just jump through the open doors.”
SHUT UP, THIS IS SERIOUS is a standout YA that features two girlfriends going through the most exciting and painful school year of their lives. The question is, when everything falls apart, will they be there for each other?
Recommended by: Richie Partington, MLIS, California USA
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