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.