City Girls

Informationen zum Autor LORETTA LOPEZ is a Mexican-American therapist living in New York City with clinical specialties including childhood trauma, serious mental illness, and patients with refugee and immigrant statuses. She holds a M.A. from Columbia University’s School of Social Work and a B.A. with Honors in the Written Arts from Bard College. Her writing has been recognized by the Gold Portfolio Award from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the Turkey Land Cove’s writers grant. Klappentext What Elisa, Lucia, and Alice see-and judge-of each other from the outside is drastically different from how each girl feels inside. They attend the same classes in the same New York City middle school, but no one knows that Elisa is trying to navigate the bewildering asylum process having just arrived from El Salvador; or that Lucia, who also speaks Spanish and brims with self-confidence, is caught in the middle of her parents' heartbreaking divorce; or that Alice, who appears to be a rebel in combat boots, carries the burden of her mother's progressing cancer. Leseprobe Elisa   1   My body is still getting used to hers. And even though I don’t want to, I flinch as my mami runs her fingers through my black hair. I don’t really know what she thinks of me yet, but she does say my hair is as smooth as rose petals. I wish she would tell me that I’m beautiful, or that she missed me a lot, or that I’m really smart. I know Ms. Lee and Ms. Luz think I’m smart, but they also think I’m annoying. They narrow their eyes when I can’t stop fidgeting, when I make drawings of them, when I laugh out loud while they talk and talk.   On the subway, I look at the other girls. From a distance they don’t seem too different from me. Maybe they’re also smart and annoying. Maybe their hair is also soft. Maybe their mamis also don’t tell them that they are beautiful. But do they feel what I’m feeling? That all of this seems impossible? I try to imagine their thoughts. Are they remembering something? What are they remembering? Do their memories feel like mine, like foggy stories, like dreams?   2   Everything is new: new city, new house, new school. It’s almost like my mami is new too because we haven’t seen each other in a very long time. She left when I was four, so that makes it seven whole years. Now we spend so much time together. Every morning we take a really long subway ride to my new school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, NYC. My mami says it’s worth it because it’s a nice school in a nice neighborhood (I guess that means our neighborhood is not nice). My mami says it’s also lucky I got here in September so I could start with the other kids who have been here all along. Everything feels fast and gigantic, ready to pop and burst into sparks. My mami says she used to feel like that too but not anymore.   We are in front of the school. I look at the other kids and they aren’t holding their moms’ hands the way I am. A lot of them come alone, they just walk in like it’s nothing. My mami kisses me on the forehead and whispers, “Be good, hermosa.” I go into the enormous brown building with lots of windows like eyes and stairs like teeth. I give everyone pretty smiles because that’s what my mami would like. She wants everyone to think I’m cute. She says they will treat me better if they think that.   Before class starts, I practice names. There’s Lola, Francesca, Julio, Aisha, Tobias, Lobo (which is a weird thing to name your kid, if you ask me—no one would name their kid “Wolf” in El Salvador), Alice, and Lucia. Soon I find out that Lola is the popular girl. She wears beautiful dresses and skirts that fit her perfectly. She likes light pink and white. They match her long blond hair. Everyone thinks she looks like an angel and wishes she acted like one because she says the meanest things 3 that stick in your brain for a long time. Alice is the opposite of Lola...

About the author

Loretta Lopez

Product details

• Authors: Loretta Lopez
• Publisher: Seven stories press
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 9 to 12
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 12.03.2024
• EAN: 9781644213421
• ISBN: 978-1-64421-342-1
• No. of pages: 144
• Dimensions: 145 mm x 217 mm x 14 mm
• Subject: Children's and young people's books > Young people's books from 12 years of age