Becoming Americana

Becoming Americana is a sequel of sorts to Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps. It takes place several years later, when the young Lupe Perez we met in the first book is grown up and working on making it out of the old neighborhood. She's a student at UCLA and volunteers at The Vibe, a center for at-risk teens. It's not easy. All she wants is to keep her head down, finish school, and get out. But when she helps a fellow student after a mugging, it leads to an article in the school paper making her sound like a heroine and an All-American success story--Bad Girl from the Barrio Makes Good--giving her celebrity and leading people to view her as a type, not a person. To top it off, her professor wants her to write her thesis on Americanization, so she's thinking about what it means to be American. The story follows Lupe as she escapes her brother; moves in with Nash, The Vibe's director, who she's had a crush on for years; starts to date Will, the student who wrote the article; and has to make a choice between a great job and finishing school. It's full of emotional ups and downs, gritty realism, love, heartbreak, acceptance, and betrayal. I shared her pain at the decision to leave her family; and I shared her dilemmas of Nash or Will, school or the job. Through it all, however, what Lupe wants is what we all want: to be accepted as ourselves. She made some mistakes and some good choices, and ultimately, everything turned out for the best. Normally, I complain about epilogues. Not this time. This epilogue was the end of the story--it wouldn't have been finished without it. There's an exception to every rule. I thoroughly enjoyed Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps, but I liked Becoming Americana even better. Because Lupe's past is darker, the story is darker, but it's also full of life and hope.

In Southern California, Lupe Perez has her feet in two worlds. She attends UCLA with aspirations of achieving the American dream; however, at night she returns home to impoverish East L.A. She hides her background including her incident with the cops. However, when she "rescues" Tracey, she suddenly has a new friend, who tells a reporter on the UCLA Bruin newspaper. Now everyone knows that Lupe has totally turned her life from a bad girl heading for trouble to a caring person who volunteers time to the community, works at a food court and attends college. Lupe wants her celebrity status to end faster than Warhol's allotted time for fame. However, Dr. Reyes wants Lupe to embrace her effort by writing a book size thesis on the Americanization of Mexican immigrants. Reluctantly she agrees though she is not sure what that means to her. Using the thesis as the prime device to tell Lupe's story of how she went from becoming the American nightmare to the dream, BECOMING AMERICANA is an interesting chick lit look at assimilation. Adding to the reality of Lupe's observation and tribulations is that at times she is not a nice person though for the most part she is. Though some of her actions seem out of kilter with her personality, Lara Rios provides a fascinating look at immigration from a perspective ignored by the beltway sound biters. Harriet Klausner