83 pages • 2 hours read
Erika L. SanchezI Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 6-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Julia must attend her cousin Victor’s 7th birthday party, even though she knows she will not enjoy herself. She is expected to kiss everyone hello, even relatives she does not like or does not know. One of the relatives she cannot stand is her tio (uncle) Cayetano, who used to force his fingers into Julia’s mouth. Tia Milagros, who Julia thinks has become a “bitter, resentful woman” (78), comments on Julia’s appetite, but Julia knows that it is meant to be critical. Julia chats with her distant relatives Freddy and Alicia, whom she admires. They are the only college graduates in the family, and they offer to help her with college applications.
For the rest of the party, Julia reads by herself in the living room until Apa and her uncles interrupt to drink tequila while reminiscing about their childhoods in Los Ojos. Tio Bigotes drunkenly invites Julia over to the table and criticizes her for reading and not enjoying time with her family. He also criticizes her Spanish, but Amá and Apa do not defend her.
That night, Julia has a nightmare that she is at her grandmother’s house in Mexico. The house is burning, and her dead grandfather wordlessly offers her a slaughtered goat. Julia jumps in the river to escape the flames, and underwater, she sees several mermaids, one of whom is Olga. She is unable to reach her and wakes up crying.
Chapter 7 Summary
Lorena befriends a proudly gay boy at school named Juan Garcia, who goes by Juanga. Julia is jealous of Lorena’s new friendship because Lorena is her only loyal friend. Lorena invites Julia to attend a masquerade with her and Juanga. To convince Amá, Lorena has already forged a permission slip from the school detailing an overnight college stay for the girls that weekend. At home, Julia tries convincing Amá, but Amá refuses to let her go, reminding her that Olga was able to go to college and remain with her family.
On the night of the party, Julia sneaks out of the apartment after her parents have fallen asleep. Juanga and Lorena pick her up, and they enjoy themselves while drinking and dancing at the party. Jazmyn, one of Olga’s high school friends, recognizes Julia at the masquerade. Jazmyn tells her about the last time she ran into Olga several years ago, when Olga told her about a man she was in love with. Julia tells Jazmyn that Olga died, which upsets them both. Julia goes to the bathroom to calm down but cannot find Jazmyn afterwards to ask her more about her conversation with Olga. Julia, Juanga, and Lorena are all drunk by the time they leave, and Juanga dangerously drives them home. Julia thinks about Jazmyn’s unsettled reaction to the news of Olga’s death, and thinks: “Everywhere I go, my sister’s ghost is hovering” (97).
Chapter 8 Summary
Amá brings Julia with her to clean houses during the weekend. The houses are all in a rich neighborhood in Chicago, and Julia cannot stand the clients they have to interact with. As they clean a professor’s messy house, Julia tries to break the silence by starting a conversation with Amá. Julia wants to be transparent about how difficult school has been for her since Olga’s death, but she knows that Amá cannot relate because neither of her parents attended high school, which feels strange.
When Julia asks Amá about Olga’s love life, Amá insists that Olga only ever had one boyfriend, Pedro. When Julia presses her further, Amá gets frustrated and says that girls who do not spend time with their families, unlike Olga, “have no morals” (103). On the way home, Julia reflects on how thankless and exhausting her mother’s work is.
Chapter 9 Summary
Julia decides to go to her school dance, but only because she has a chance to talk to someone at the after party who knew Olga. Amá offers to buy her a new dress, but when Julia finds one she likes, Amá refuses to buy it because she thinks it is too revealing. This leads to another argument, and Julia borrows a dress from Lorena. At the dance, Julia stands by herself while Lorena runs off to dance with some friends. A classmate named Chris approaches Julia and compliments her, but then he criticizes the way she normally dresses. He thinks she is conceited and that she “[talks] like a white girl” (110). Julia rejoins her friends, and they dance around her, making her laugh.
After the dance, Julia goes to the after party with Lorena. She knows she will get in trouble but is intent on finding Jessica, Olga’s old classmate. Julia spends most of the evening searching for her, and Lorena makes no effort to help Julia. Julia falls asleep on the couch, and Lorena wakes her up at three in the morning because someone called the police.
Julia’s parents ground her, not even allowing her to go to the library. She reflects on how unhappy she is, feeling like some days she is “held together by a string,” while at “other times [she feels] entirely unstitched or unhinged” (118). After English class one day, Mr. Ingman checks in with Julia, noticing that something is wrong. She shares how difficult it has been since Olga died, and he reassures her that she had nothing to do with her sister’s death.
When she gets home from school and sees Amá cleaning the kitchen, Julia feels guilty: “guilty for existing, guilty that she has to work like that for [her family]” (121). Amá notices Julia looks ill and interrogates her about what she has been doing and eating. Amá is especially concerned because she does not want Julia to be sick for her quinceañera. Julia feels a sudden pain and discovers her period has started early.
Chapters 6-9 Analysis
Julia would rather sit at home alone than go spend time with her family at her cousin’s birthday party, even though her relatives are constantly reminding her how family is of the utmost importance. At the party, she escapes the anxiety-inducing conversations with her family members by delving into Catcher in the Rye, and though these fictional worlds bring relief to Julia’s undesirable life, her voluntary detachment further alienates her from her family. The desire to avoid them is not unwarranted, though, as she mentions that her tio Cayetano used to force his fingers into her mouth. The casualness with which Julia remembers this, and the fact that she wonders if Olga experienced this too, suggests this kind of lewd behavior might not be uncommon, and it clearly goes unaddressed by family members and is implicitly accepted.
Julia’s 16-year-old cousin Vanessa already has a baby and represents the pitiful life Julia is desperately trying to avoid, while Freddy and Alicia, college-educated intellectuals, symbolize the life Julia wants. Uncomfortable social settings like this party only further spur Julia’s ambition to leave this community behind, characterized by the “yowling” she tries to drown out with food. Her insatiable hunger and ambition are further discussed in the Symbols sections. That night, Julia has an eerie dream in which Olga appears as a mermaid, and Julia’s inability to reach her symbolizes the elusive truths about her that Julia is so vehemently searching for.
When Julia helps Amá at work, it becomes clear to her just how much of a toll house-cleaning takes on her physically and mentally. Not only is the job demanding of her mother’s body, she is subject to regular degradation and humiliation by her wealthy, white clients. Though this sheds light on the extent of Amá’s sacrifices for her family, it also reinforces Julia’s desire to build a life for herself that is vastly different from her parents’. The divide between them becomes even more evident when Julia tries to talk to Amá about school—the one thing she feels she excels at—but she knows Amá cannot relate or understand its significance, as it was a non-essential part of her childhood. These critical differences in their upbringings are something both Julia and her parents must reconcile and accept to better understand each other and approach one another with more empathy as opposed to misplaced anger and resentment.
Julia reaches more and more dead ends about Olga’s past, but Olga’s ghost is always hovering (182), and Julia feels her own mental health deteriorating, manifesting in apathy and insomnia. Her alienation, coupled with the fact that no one else in her life demonstrates healthy communication or coping mechanisms, makes it that much more difficult for her to accept help or openly discuss her grief. Mr. Ingman is the only adult in her life who explicitly takes an interest in her well-being, which provides Julia with at least a little bit of comfort. In a stark contrast, when Julia looks ill, Amá’s primary concern is the quinceañera and Julia’s appearance to the rest of the family, an interaction which only further fuels Julia’s resentment and desire to distance herself from her parents.
