I just finished reading “Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps” by Lara Rios, and, having been unaware of the “chick lit” genre until after the fact, I was able to enjoy it without worrying about whether I should. A little less feminine fantasy, a little more depth, and I’d have liked it more, but I enjoyed the time spent just the same, and it was well worth the $4.00 I paid for it. How prices like that (it included shipping!) could ever profit anyone is another topic entirely, but it was worth the money.

It’s funny how a book can be about what it’s supposed to be about, or whatever the material - how a story can be a story to be funny because it’s comedy,¹ a satire biting because it’s bitter, a critique critical just because - funny how this can be while when I read or hear or see a thing, it can hit a target so entirely off the original mark, yet so disturbingly centered somewhere soft. So when I read the book I had a good time, liked the characters and ignored the things I’d like to edit. I always see things I’d like to edit, because books are all too often all too transparent.

And when I read the book, enjoying it because it was funny and sexy and very hit-homeish on some points, the most absurd thing happened, because I very nearly cried, and it was at a passage that had very little to do with what with which the book has to do.

Ahi, Mi’ja, you were this tiny little girl who was so hermosa, so like your mother, and you loved me and followed me around like I was a king.

What’s this? Tears? In my eyes? No, there must be a misunderstanding. It’s late² and I must simply be tired. This doesn’t even relate or apply. It’s not about the book, certainly not about me. But I felt that tingly feeling rush all over my body still the same. And it applies because it doesn’t apply, because I’m not a girl but I’m a boy, but girls and boys are all just niños and it doesn’t apply at all but I could see it applying if it were ever, could ever be applicable. And it never was and never will be, never can be.

That’s how my life has been and is, and I’ve always thought that it was fine. I thought that’s how Things were, how they must be, and all for the better. I thought that I had gotten over it - in fact, that there was nothing to get over in the first place, that the issue never was. And so for just a second, for less than a second, I read the passage and imagined, and oh I imagine so very well when I’ve been reading - so imagined, and for just that second, that less-than-second, I felt the ache from a little hole inside of me that my mother alone could simply never fill. It’s gone now, all but the memory. But the memory makes me wonder.

1. literati, go to hell. [↩]
2. ok, early. [↩]