38 pages 1 hour read

Stella Díaz Has Something to Say

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018

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Character Analysis

Stella Diaz

Stella, a Mexican American girl who has just started third grade, is the novel’s protagonist. Stella is a round and highly dynamic character, going through significant personal changes over the course of the novel. One of Stella’s biggest challenges is that she struggles with speech, often confusing Spanish and English pronunciations, and uses occasional Spanish words when speaking English. In the opening pages of the novel, Stella’s brother Nick makes fun of her for mispronouncing “tornado”—pronouncing the a as ah as it would be in Spanish—and Stella is so embarrassed that she turns “roja like a tomato” (6). Stella becomes more fluent in English over the school year, but she also learns to see the influence of Mexican Spanish in her speech as an expression of her identity—something to be proud of. 

When she first enters third grade, Stella is enrolled in speech therapy sessions, and she often becomes frustrated and embarrassed by her speaking difficulties. She accidentally speaks Spanish instead of English when trying to introduce herself to her new classmate, for example, which leaves her feeling humiliated for weeks. Stella also feels estranged from some of her Mexican family members because she can’t speak Spanish as fluently as they can.

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