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

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter Overview

Erika L. Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is a first-person young adult novel about Julia, a Mexican-American teen living in Chicago. After Julia’s perfect older sister dies, she searches for clues that might reveal her sister’s rebellious past. At the same time, Julia struggles through her last two years of high school, trying to reconcile her parents’ conservative values with her own individualism, independence, and literary ambitions. Julia’s story meditates on the difficulty of all relationships: with family, with friends, with romantic partners, and especially with the self. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter explores many of the important themes of American teenage life, including cultural identity, mental health, sexuality and sexual violence, family pressure, and class.