Once upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA, and: Hijas Americanas: Beauty, Body Image, and Growing up Latina (review)

Dancing with my father to Julio Iglesias's De Niña a Mujer in a peach poufy dress as family and Latino and non-Latino guests watched (or pretended to). The first conversation I had with my mother about what age I could date. Being told "but you're not like those other Spanish people." Sigh. Flashes of memory from my growing-up years were brought to the surface upon reading Alvarez's Once Upon a Quinceañera and Molinary's Hijas Americanas. As a U.S.-born Latina, I found myself reacting to the familiar and couldn't help but drift from the pages to a memory evoked by a particular passage. Between smiles and head shakes, I found myself thinking, how would I answer that question? How did we handle that situation? And later, beyond the surface of these trips to the past, how do these questions and experiences speak to broader issues affecting young Latinas today and the meanings they make from them?

Both books blend some form of research with autobiography to explore the meanings young women make of Latinidad through rituals of connection, living inside hybridity, and negotiating uncertainty, critique and loyalty. In her book, Alvarez deconstructs the quinceañera—a term that refers to both the fifteen-year-old young woman and the celebration of this milestone in Latino/a communities. In trying to trace the origins of the tradition, she finds herself more drawn to the meanings youth and their families have for the quinceañera. She invites us to follow her through one particular quince party taking place in Queens, New York, and in between describes interviews she has conducted with the people that help make this happen: The photographers, florists, church staff, dressmakers. Having attended five quince parties over the course of a year of research, she also includes materials she learned from Web sites, quince expos, and other authors of quince rituals. She juxtaposes this sense of celebration with worry for young Latinas as she cites census data and other statistics that illustrate the negative outcomes she sees affecting young Latinas in terms of educational attainment. Her analysis consists of conversations between Alvarez's own personal stories, the stories of the women she interviewed and observed, and the statistics she reviewed, moving her to a complex understanding of the multiple meanings people ascribe to the experience of a quinceañera.

Whereas Alvarez offers an in-depth analysis into a specific coming-of-age tradition, Molinary offers a broader comprehensive look at how Latinas viewed their coming-of-age experiences. Molinary's book is a detailed description of the results of eighty interviews and an online survey taken by more than 500 adult women who self-identified as Latina or Hispanic. She covers many areas in the 157-item Growing up Latina Survey and organizes this information according to certain chapter themes that involve negotiating the cultures of home and mainstream United States, the role of religion and spirituality, representations of Latinidad in the media, the contradictory messages about Latina body image and sexualities, and experiences of stereotyping and alienation. These chapters consist primarily of ongoing snippets of data, quotes from the surveys and interviews, and slices of the author's own life, in conversation with the data. In an effort to provide pictures of hope rather than simply damage, Molinary also includes a chapter on five women who she considers to be role models and success stories, Latinas who are in politics, the entertainment industry, music, and athletics. The concluding chapter of Molinary's book, like that of Once Upon a Quinceañera, includes parting words of consejos, the nurturing advice typically transmitted from our elders and wise women to Latina youth.

Every culture...