"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."
— I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez
By Erika L. Sánchez
Directed and Adapted by Ana Maria Jomolca
Literature to Life adapts Erika L. Sánchez’s YA novel as their newest title in their Signature Performance series. This title will be co-produced in partnership with Freedom Reads, the only organization in the nation transforming the experience of incarceration by opening libraries in prison housing facilities. Freedom Reads was founded by Reginald Dwayne Betts in 2020. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter takes place in modern day Chicago. The novel focuses on the idea of finding one’s own identity, and breaking free from societal, cultural, and familial expectations.
The Story
The story follows Julia Reyes, a Chicago high school student, as she navigates trials and tribulations of following her dreams of becoming a writer, alongside the death of her sister, Olga—who might not have been quite as perfect as she seemed.
Appropriate for: middle / high school, college, and community audiences