I came across For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts by Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez while I was scrolling through Instagram. Postings of an online community called Latinas & Libros Amigas Book Club within the network called WeAllGrow Amigas came across my endless scrolling screen. It had been a while since I have come across Latin American literature and felt like leaning into my curiosity.
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I don’t want to compare stories but this book made me relate it to the book Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (links to Amazon) . Two strong women moving out of the binds of their family idealistic upbringing that hold them back.
Prisca recounts the story of how she grew up in her religious household. There were many words of Mi Mami and Mi Papi, endearing words for parents, that were a bit too repetitious. But I’m sure there was a reason why she decided to keep using those words. Her viewpoint of colonialism, white privilege and white fragility are constant themes in the book. And although I can hear her strength in her words, there is also her frailty. Almost like a limiting belief that she still has not been able to overcome. The situations she had to overcome in dealing with white dominated spaces were something I never really understood. Situations that I’ve been in before but never viewed it as defensively as she did. Maybe I just never gave them importance because I didn’t care too much about what other people said.
This book made me reflect on how I grew up. Although we are both Latinas, my upbringing was a bit more liberal. My divorced parents never instilled religion on us, my father was not a macho/machista dominated male, my brother not dominant either, and my mother was too busy hustling to keep tabs on us; therefore, my sisters and I grew up with a fairly bohemian and free lifestyle. Our only limiting belief was not because of what we looked like, or what we sounded like or that and we were immigrants but our limiting money beliefs. My parents had faith in all of us to be some type of successful. Some of us went to college and others didn’t. They didn’t want us to struggle like they did but sometimes its hard to get past limiting money beliefs.
All in all, the book was definitely a good read. It’s a different perspective about someone who has felt like an outcast in every group she has been in. The author has not overcome the weight of white people’s opinion about her and as if she has been carrying those opinions with her for a long time. It makes me think she worries too much about being validated by that group when in reality, she has trusted herself all along to get where she is now by being her unapologetic self.
Have you read the book? What are your opinions about it? Comment below and let me know what you think about it. 🙂