Dole, Mayra Lazara - Down to the Bone

[oyceter]

Laura Amores is kicked out of Catholic school when a nun finds a note sent to her from her girlfriend, Marlena. She's then kicked out of the house by her mother. She manages to find shelter with her best friend Soli, and she spends most of the book trying to figure out her sexuality and what communities she wants to belong to.

Like much of coming-of-age YA, the storyline is not the most original, but Lauri's voice is very lively, and I love how Dole populates her book with Latin@s of all kinds. And I really love that there is an important POC/POC interracial friendship (Soli is black)! Dole also includes genderqueer characters, a few mentions of drag queens, and transgendered characters, although the central conflict still revolves around Laura identifying as a lesbian or not.

Some of the conflicts are rather obvious for the genre—there's the encounter with the homophobe, the boyfriend, the non-accepting family—and Dole doesn't always deal with them in ways that make them more than their outlines. Lauri's voice also doesn't always work for me, but I suspect that's because I'm pretty far from being a Latina lesbian teen in Miami. Still, the book feels very now and very alive, and I really love the communities Dole portrays in the book.

I'm looking forward to what Dole does next; I think she has a good voice and would love to see her tackle less common storylines.

Copy won from Color Online. Many thanks!

Comments

[gair]

Oh, hey, weird - I've had this for months and just read it yesterday... I was a bit harsher on Lauri's voice/the narrative voice in general than you - to me it swung a bit wildly between infodump and trying-too-hard colloquialisms ('I am genderqueer! That means I be chillin with people who don't define themselves according to the mainstream conception of binary gender!'). But I really, really enjoyed the coming-out narrative, which I thought worked really well to seize on the things that are useful and i-hate-to-say-it but empowering about 'coming out' while not essentializing, ie not insisting that a particular narrative has to accompany and authorize a particular identity. It was also the first queer YA book I've read since Jenny Pausacker's What Are Ya? (1985, sigh) that talks about how you can get physically turned on by making out with boys without necessarily being sexually attracted to boys as boys, or making that part of your identity/sexuality. (But I didn't think it was biphobic, either.) And yeah, the diversity of the cast was fantastic.

[oyceter]

No, there were definitely parts of Lauri's voice that didn't work for me, like it was trying too hard to be slangy. Especially the first chapter. But I also wasn't sure how much of that was just me not knowing that much slang too!

slangy?

[(Anonymous)]

SLANGY? i'm laughing my heart out. this is the way some Cuban teens speak. see, if we'd have more teens of color books, white readers would get it and would know i wasn't trying hard to add territorial colloquialisms or slang. latino/a teens of color get it. i'm excited that you gave my book a chance, though, and that you liked some parts. thanks!

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

Really? You didn't think it was biphobic?

'Cause I enjoyed it enormously until one of the characters (the girlfriend, I think) voiced a really ugly biphobic sentiment and no other voice in the book argued with her, at which point I almost threw it away. I remember there was a positive but minor bi character, but whenever any character voices a common and socially-acceptable bigotry and no other voice opposes (which is often the form of biphobia in lesbian communities) I take offense.

your sentiments

[mayraldole.wordpress.com]

it's realistic of ingrained homophobia and exactly what i was trying to portray. sorry u didn't get it. i'm the author and i'm bi/lesbian. good that it got u upset but i wish you'd had read it thinking about why a lesbian character would say such a F'd up thing. too bad u took offense. i'm on your side!

Re: your sentiments

[oyceter]

Thanks for all your comments here, it's always interesting hearing what the author intended. That said, the "I wish you'd read it thinking about..." feels uncomfortably close to territory regarding authorial intent and reader interpretation, and I'd like to stay away from there. I don't mind arguing about interpretations at all, or clarifying intent, but I don't like saying reading against authorial intent is less right, particularly when it comes to issues of oppression.

interpretation

[(Anonymous)]

you're right. it's just the way cubans speak. we always say, "i wish you'd done it this way or that way..." and it doesn't carry the same meaning you might think... it's just a cultural way of being friendly and stating a wish... reading against authorial intent is RIGHT! if it's what you read, then more power to it! thanks for sharing and for being so upfront. i appreciate your brutal honesty.

Re: interpretation

[(Anonymous)]

my name didn't show on the above comment. it's me, mayra.

Re: interpretation

[oyceter]

No prob, and sorry for misunderstanding! I wasn't quite sure about the meaning so I figured I'd err on the side of checking.

Re: interpretation

[mayraldole.wordpress.com]

no prob. believe it or not, i get u. thanks for speaking ur mind. i respect that.

[gair]

Erk - I think I must have completely missed this moment in the book. In my comment above, I just meant that I thought the way the protagonist's sexuality was treated wasn't biphobic - ie that the author had managed to talk about the way that you can experience some kind of desire for boys while remaining emotionally-sexually-romantically oriented exclusively towards women, without insisting that monosexuality is normal or superior or compulsory. But that sort of only works if there aren't any biphobic moments in the book more generally, so thanks for the heads-up - I totally agree with you about this:

whenever any character voices a common and socially-acceptable bigotry and no other voice opposes (which is often the form of biphobia in lesbian communities) I take offense.

At least I do when I notice it, obviously - but I know I need to work on raising my awareness of biphobia.

[sanguinity]

I was less-pleased with it -- reading as an older, out lesbian, Lauri's "but lesbians are icky! So I can't be a lesbian!" shtick filled me with the same sort of growling impatience that it fills me with when I encounter it in real life.

On the other hand, it is an accurate portrayal of how that dynamic comes about -- queer communities have little to no generation-to-generation continuity, so you periodically run into young LGBT people who know nothing about queer identities except straight-propagated stereotypes, and who thus regard older, queer-identified queers with the same mistrust and suspicion that straight society generally regards them with.

But eh, those are my buttons, not yours.

You read Lauri as POC? Lauri explicitly identifies some Cubans as white, and seems to include herself in that group, and so I was thinking of her as white.

[oyceter]

You read Lauri as POC? Lauri explicitly identifies some Cubans as white, and seems to include herself in that group, and so I was thinking of her as white.

Damnit! This is what happens when I write things up a few weeks after I read them. I don't remember those bits at all; will have to check the book when I have access to it again.

I can definitely see the anti-lesbianism being annoying. I was impatient with it as well, but I also felt as though I didn't really have the right to be? Since it is not an identity I have to struggle with. But yes, it would also be nice to read YA books about GLBTQ characters that aren't about coming out.

[sanguinity]

I had been trying to figure out if I could count it for the comm or not, so that was something I was thinking about while I was reading it. The most explicit bit is a scene where she passes/meets some other Cubanas on the street and describes them as white. Laura never explicitly self-identified that I saw, but I had the impression (which may or may not be accurate) that if she were to self-identify, she would have identified as a white Cubana.


:: but I also felt as though I didn't really have the right to be? Since it is not an identity I have to struggle with. ::

*nods* That's a sensible way to go.

I go back and forth on whether I should have more patience for it, but I mostly come down on the side that someone will need to growl at them sooner or later about who they're insulting when they talk like that, and since I'm there listening to it, it might as well be me. *shrug*

ur input

[mayraldole.wordpress.com]

i appreciate ur comments. Laura is similar to a lot of young, Closeted, Latina teens. Latino cultures are more open now but conservatives tend to be homophobic. Laura had internalized homophobia and why at first, she didn't want to be seen as what conservatives in my culture would view as "icky" homos. i can see you are "out" and why it would be hard to get through some of the parts you mention. Saludos!

Re: ur input

[sanguinity]

*nods* I in no way meant to imply that the dynamic wasn't real, nor important. It is both real and important.

I'll definitely keep an eye out for your next book!

Down to the Bone

[mayraldole.wordpress.com]

hey, gracias for the review! Latino's didn't have their own "questioning" story and i wanted to write the first one so they/we could find themselves in it. GAIR, about the "infodump"... i hear ya! i wrote it eight years ago and it just got published. back then, no one had ever heard of "tranniboy" or "LGBTQ" and i was asked to explain. i hope to update the new edition. my next novel is 100 percent "out" and different from DTTB with a storyline that's never ben told. hope you guys read it!

Re: Down to the Bone

[oyceter]

Thanks for the notes! And I'm looking forward to your next book!

Re: Down to the Bone

[gair]

Hey - ouch, on having to wait eight years. I look forward to the next one enormously.

And yeah, the infodump/the bits where I thought the voice lurched between different registers were also the bits that showed the difficulty of what you were having to do - bring a new set of voices and experiences into an established genre. Thanks for doing it!

[jadelennox]

I just read this one last week. What I loved was that it wasn't a book About Latinas or About Cuban-Americans. It was a book set in a world where almost everyone was Latino, and the conflict wasn't between conservative Cuban culture and the more correctly permissive (read: normative white American) culture, but between conservative Cuban-American culture and queer/permissive/vegetarian Cuban-American culture. That was so unheard of for me, and I was so grateful for it.

DTTB

[mayraldole.wordpress.com]

Jade, your comment about my book is so on target and made my day.
People who understand and appreciate my writing inspire and move me to write. Gracias!

[oyceter]

Yes, that was definitely one of my favorite parts about the book! It was an extremely welcome antidote to the whole invisibility of POC in GLBTQ circles, esp. after the Prop. 8 stuff.

[(Anonymous)]

thanks for the great discussion! i just did a review of this book here: http://neeshameminger.blogspot.com/2009/09/mayra-lazara-dole-gets-down-to-bone.html. i never picked up on the struggle being between conservative cuban-americans and progressive cuban-americans. very true. another reason to like it :).

[oyceter]

I love that the book is so focused on Cuban Americans! I'm so annoyed with the stereotype that POC communities are somehow more homophobic and the whitewashing of GLBTQ movements, so I was really glad to see so many POC and so many viewpoints in this book.

[thehappynappybookseller.blogspot.com]

I read Down to the Bone, the year it came out and loved it. Since its been so long I can't break down the characters. But I still remember why I loved it. Lauri's new family. The author surrounds the main character with some wonderful fully developed characters. Characters readers can learn from, better understand or find pieces of themselves in. Though the author educates she never ever forgets the story. Sometimes authors have good intentions of teaching through fiction but the story gets lost amongst the facts.

And yes there are many YA stories about teens coming out. Though Down to the Bone is the only one featuring Latina's When you think about it there aren't many YA books with people of color coming out or girls for that matter. I work at a bookstore for the most part all the coming out stories I see coming in feature White male protagonist.

I've enjoyed reading this discussion and taking part. Thanks

[oyceter]

Yeah, apart from Alex Sanchez' books, I really haven't seen many YA books about coming out for POC. And his tend to focus more on the male experience. And one of my favorite things about this book was that it was almost all POC all the time, which I feel is still not as common in POC YA books, though it's getting more common.