I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

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.