ABSTRACT
I examine the protagonist Julia Reyes’s ChicaNerd identity as a literature and poetry nerd, much like Gabi and Lupita. Significantly, of all the ChicaNerds I explore in this book, I suggest that Julia is the most rebellious of the characters. The novel provides particular attention to an extremely tense relationship between Julia and her mother and emphasizes the ChicaNerd’s struggle to construct an authentic sense of self amid familial pressure to be the “good daughter.” As a teenaged Chicana living in Chicago and who dons band tee shirts, Doc Martens, and jeans on a regular basis, Julia frames her ChicaNerd identity around this rebellion to her family’s gender expectations. While Julia struggles to live within the confines of what she sees as her parents’ old-fashioned and oppressive ways, the novel, like the others examined in this study, does not comfortably accept the common belief that Mexican/Chicanx parents merely groom their daughters for eventual heterosexual marriage and motherhood.
