Description
Its the early 2010s, and seventeen-year-old Yesenia Rivera hates everything about herself: her brown skin and wide nose, her curly hair and hand-me-down clothing, and her inability to fit in with either the Mexican girls or the white girls at her school. So when her mothers new job requires them to uproot their lives and move to the Pacific Northwest, Yesenia devises a plan to remake herself completely. Cloaked in skin lightening cream, blue contact lenses, dyed-blonde hair, and a whiter name, Yesenias-aka Jessies-newfound ability to pass as white in her new school gets her the popularity shes always dreamed of. Yet as her brazen confidence morphs into hubris, all it takes is a couple of slip-ups for someone to take notice. Guillermo Riveraaka Willy, an easier-to-pronounce nickname bestowed upon him by his classmatesis no stranger to sticking out at their predominantly white high school, right down to his too-small wrestling shoes. Bothered by how little hes able to help his low-income mother and seduced by the prospect of financial stability, he reluctantly settles into a flattened, stereotyped version of himself in exchange for being needed by his white peers. But when selling to Jessies new friends pushes him farther out of his comfort zone and, dangerously, into theirs, both he and Jessie begin to suffer the mounting cost of what whiteness demands of them. The more theyre forced together, the more their tenuously crafted double lives threaten to crumble. Until one day, when those lives collide . . .
Author: Josuee Hernández
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Flux
Published: 09/30/2025
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9781635831078
Language: English
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