Book Review: Readings

Once Upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA

"Education is teaching our children to desire the right things." Attributed to Plato, this quote reappears throughout Julia Alvarez's newest book, Once Upon a Quinceañera. It's a provocative claim, in content and context: to begin with, is corralling desire, whatever it is -- shaping it, directing it -- even possible? In the context of Alvarez's book, it provides a base to return to after taking readers on her examination of the quinceañera. The Latin American tradition has much in common with the sweet 16 and other "coming out" affairs. Fundamentally, it's a celebration of a young Latina becoming a woman, an "elaborate, ritualized fiesta on her fifteenth birthday."

How Latinos, buffeted by immigration, class, culture, and, most importantly, the narcotic lure of U.S. consumerism, variously enact this fiesta both fascinates and repels Alvarez. Once Upon a Quinceañera is her first-person account of her exploration of the tradition, through a composite subject named Monica, "somewhere in Middle Village, Queens." Throughout, she describes other quinceañeras she experienced, meditating on just what it is that makes a girl a woman and, more importantly, the role of ritual in this and other milestone moments in life.

Once Upon a Quince­añera is breezy and accessible, but it's not "light" reading. Her narrative meticulously weaves history, social-science research, the story of Monica's quinceañera, a myriad of interviews, and her personal coming-of-age story in the U.S. as a young immigrant from the Dominican Republic. That she does this so effortlessly belies the complexity of her subject matter. Besides being a fiesta, the quinceañera is a nexus from which to examine not just the Latino immigrant experience but the role of ritual and ceremony in the greater U.S. What does it mean to become a woman -- or man, for that matter? Whom do young people have as their role models? And finally, can humans from any culture survive without meaningful ritual and ceremony? While Alvarez's inclinations are clear, she provides the reader with a broad palette of distinctive subjects to ponder and debate.