Growing Up Bicultural through Food in Erika Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

초록

In her novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Erika L. Sánchez tells the coming-of-age story of a Chicana girl who struggles to reconcile her bicultural identity between the U.S. and Mexico. The novel calls attention to the challenges faced by undocumented Mexican immigrants, including economic poverty, racial discrimination, and gender stereotypes placed on Chicanas. This paper sheds light on the issue of high suicide rates among Latina teenagers in America. It suggests that the protagonist Julia’s anxiety and mental disorders, which led to her attempted suicide, can be related to trauma transmitted from Mexican immigrant families. This paper aims to analyze ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural discrimination that Mexican immigrants face by using food motifs, and to explore the meaning of sharing food served as a catalyst for Julia’s healing, focusing on the correlation between her depression and insatiable hunger. In this way, it explores the importance of having realistic and authentic stories with minority protagonists in the white-centered American literary world.

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