I bought this book because it sounded cute, and I'm always here for Latine and LGBTQ+ rep. While each author writes for each girl (I'm assuming), the book sounded cohesive and kinda like it had been written by just one person. TBH, I was too engrossed in the story to stop and think about that sort of thing.
Lita (Estrellita) is a sweet and petite sensitive soul who makes friends with cacti and helps her "aunt" with her brujeria (positive). She's kind of a mini pixie dream girl (get it? cuz she's short and quirky) who wears what she wants and rides a little girl's bike. This might be a spoiler, as it's not mentioned in the back of book summary, but it is mentioned within the first three chapters: Lita and Bruja Lupe arrived with the meteor; they are literally extraterrestrial stardust that was launched from the meteor/ite and somehow formed itself into two "human" beings. How it happened and why is not explained; it's very magical realism, although that's the only magical thing in the book. Lita decides to win the Miss Meteor pageant even though she's short, chubby, brown, and knows nothing about beauty pageants. Knowing this, she calls on Chicky and her MM pageant-veteran sisters to help her enter and win the pageant. Craziness ensues, obviously.
Chicky (Chiquita) is an androgynous loner who hides behind her self-cut bangs and sticks out like a sore thumb from her four older hyper-femme sisters as well as their traditional town. The Quintanillas run a really sweet-sounding diner called Selena's (Selena has the same last name as them) that I wish I could eat at. Chicky and Lita used to be best friends when they were younger, until the white popular mean kids' bullying drove them apart. While this is not important to the story, it sticks in my craw: each Quintanilla girl is named after what their great-grandmother dreamed about before they were born. For some ungodly reason, bisabuela dreamed of a different fruit each time, except that with the last one, she dreamed of Chiquita Banana. The older Quintanilla girls are out here named shit like Fresa and Uva. Literally why. This was mad cringy, in my opinion. Why not something normal yet unnecessarily feminine like flowers? Or even gemstones?
Meteor, New Mexico is just as much a character as the girls, with its quirky small-town-ness and yearly cornhole competition-slash-Miss Meteor pageant. The girls' love of their hometown is so strong that you come to love it too. That said, there's a lot of ridiculous racism and homophobia that they have to deal with. Lita gets racist/colorist/sizeist bullying; Chicky gets homophobic bullying. The popular mean girl and guy who bully them the most sadly do not get hit by a car, nor do their racist parents get hit with a train. Alas. There is some comeuppance for them at the end, but not enough. Also, I think it's weird that Miss Meteor is always a white girl. We're literally talking about small towns in New Mexico, which are mostly made up of latines? Hello? Why did no one call out the (undoubtedly white and more well-off) judges for only choosing white girls from the same families each time?
Both girls get love interests, obvi. Chicky surprisingly does not get a female love interest, but a male one: she's pansexual. Junior is an artist and a longtime friend of Chicky's who has always liked her, and she has to overcome her fear of ruining their friendship and truly being seen. Lita's love interest is Cole, a trans guy who is the brother of the main bully girl (yikes). He's also a longtime friend, and Lita has to get over her insecurity about not belonging and challenging the status quo (he's popular, she's not). The romances were cute, and I liked both guys, although I feel like we focus on Junior less than we do on Cole. Cole was honestly my favorite character besides the main girls.
Anyway I liked this book so much! It gave me such a good feeling at the end. I loved the girls and their love interests and their crazy families and the town. God I wish I could eat at Selena's. I definitely recommend the book for its representation and themes. A note: this book was promoted on bookstagram (bookish Instagram) as having bisexual rep, when it actually has pansexual rep. I saw so many posts and videos touting it as bi rep that I wonder if maybe Chicky was originally written to be bi, and the publisher promoted it as such. This is rather irritating because I trusted the posts I saw and read this book for Bisexual Awareness Week, and it wasn't bi. Once again I am deceived.
Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: September 21-22
From: Book Outlet
Status: keeping
Cover notes: I love this cover. The girls' pictures, the cacti, the roses, the beauty stuff, the colors. The cupcake with sliced jalapeños on top is Lita's regular order at Selena's. *affectionately* Gross.
Trigger warnings for this book: homophobic bullying, racist bullying, internalized homophobia, anti-immigrant and anti-latine racism, transphobia, transphobic microaggressions, bullying, underage drinking, underage drunkenness, alcohol, sexism, body shaming, sizeism, fatphobia, internalized fatphobia, internalized sizeism, broken bone(s) from accident, classism, rich people making fun of poor people, bike crash, growing up poor, tokenism, false 'allyship'
No comments:
Post a Comment