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CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 7 

Book Review: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by 
Erika L. Sánchez 

Shanya A. Olivares Perez 
Department of Sociology 

California State University, Los Angeles 
 
From a cultural standpoint, there are many roles that one is 
expected to portray based on their norms and social groups. 
Minorities and people of color often have difficulty when 
integrating into American society, facing cultural barriers and the 
struggle to find their own identity outside of cultural and societal 
norms. These struggles are often a heavier burden for second-
generation immigrants (children born to two immigrant parents) 
due to the lack of mentorship from their parents on how social 
interactions work in a new culture. Often, children of immigrants 
must learn to rely on themselves to help their parents navigate a 
new country as well, becoming translators to their parents as a way 
to minimize language, cultural, and societal barriers. Due to the 
challenges of learning a new culture and trying to comprehend 
one’s personal identity, second-generation immigrants often find 
themselves having a cultural identity crisis.  

Author Erika L. Sánchez is the daughter of immigrants 
who, in the search for representation of Mexicans in media, 
decided to write her own story about the struggles of growing up 
Mexican in the United States. In addition to her bestseller, I Am 
Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Sánchez wrote two more 
books on her view of the Mexican American, second-generation 
immigrant experience: Lessons of Expulsion (2017), a series of 
poems that discuss the difference across the Mexican/U.S. border, 
and Crying in the Bathroom (2022), which is a collection of essays 
portraying her personal thoughts, views, and experiences. In 
Lessons of Expulsion, Sánchez explores how every aspect of her 
life felt like there was a border dividing her life. She talks about 
this by highlighting a border in her countries, languages, and the 
living and the dead, through her collection of poems. While 
Crying in the Bathroom is a personal ode to her life and the 
experiences that have gotten her to become a bestselling novelist, 
primarily focusing on how she felt like a rebellious 
disappointment as she grew up with expectations from her 



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CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 7 

immigrant parents. In these stories, Sánchez continues to elaborate 
on the struggles of second-generation immigrants by providing 
her own stories.  

In the novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, 
Julia Reyes is a Mexican teenager coping with the death of her 
older sister Olga, a “perfect Mexican daughter.” Across the book, 
the story follows a Mexican teen struggling with her cultural 
identity as she observes her sister and family embracing traditional 
norms easily and rejecting her for not doing so. She is overcome 
with feelings of confusion and the challenge of her sense of self 
with pressing societal expectations. Through a sociological 
approach, we can see Sánchez express the second-generation 
experience through the looking-glass-self theory, which describes 
how people base their sense of self solely on how they believe 
others see them or expect them to be. Sánchez uses her personality, 
struggles, and opinions to formulate this protagonist, which 
authenticates the thoughts and makes the story a lot more 
relatable.  

While this is a work of fiction brought to life using her 
personal experiences, Sánchez almost makes it feel like a 
collection of qualitative data, collecting stories and emotions 
regarding immigration, violence in Mexico, first-generation 
students, and motherhood, all with varying opinions and different 
experiences. Sánchez also goes on to talk about relationships, 
social perceptions of young Latin American women, and many 
religious aspects that tie into expectations and demands of this 
demographic. In the book, Julia learns that many immigrant 
mothers worry about raising children in an unfamiliar society, 
especially since they believe the new country will ‘ruin’ their 
children. One example of this is the conversation Julia’s mother 
has with her before she leaves to college where, for the first time 
in their relationship, she warns Julia about sex due to her fear of 
Julia getting pregnant or contracting STIs. This is important 
because Julia seems to have a cultural disconnect from her mother 
and disagrees that sex is that big of a deal, a very common and 
large disagreement in American and Mexican cultures. 

The main strength of this story is author Sánchez’ 
personal connection to the character, the implementation of her 
own hopes and dreams, as well as her personality, makes the 



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CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 7 

readers feel seen when reading the book. Sánchez expresses this 
consistently, often emphasizing the feeling of guilt, shame, 
ambition, and desperation that second-generation immigrants 
have from feeling misunderstood by their parents, their family, the 
culture they feel a need to fit into, and this new country they must 
learn to navigate on their own. This goes back to the looking-
glass-self, which exemplifies this feeling. Julia experiences guilt, 
from feeling like she is a disappointment, because she bases her 
sense of self on her home environment and the expectations 
coming from that. There are a lot of references to the Mexican 
culture in her story as well, which allows for the reader to identify 
some names, sayings, and beliefs, which is another strength 
throughout the book. It can also be argued that the fictional aspect 
of the storyline would detach the author from the story and make 
the book relatable. However, Sánchez speaks about not having 
that ‘perfect older sister’ in her life or the same traumas that Julie 
has, which could make readers feel like it would be Julia Reyes 
that understands them and not Sánchez.  

The book itself is easy to read, the story is captivating and, 
while it draws on many relatable and complex themes, it isn’t 
overwhelming or overbearing. The author uses Julia Reyes as an 
example of the second-generation immigrant experience, 
primarily making the argument that this specific demographic 
feels overlooked and misunderstood, especially since they are 
stuck between two cultural identities and often made to feel that 
they must choose. In this, we also get an unbiased overview of the 
immigrant experience, since Sánchez also critiques second-
generation immigrants for often overlooking that their parents 
don’t have any experience with their lifestyle and have their own 
hardships as well. Looking at the authors goals, I believe first-
generation students and second-generation immigrants would 
benefit a lot from a book like this, since it would allow them to 
find similarities with their own life. Additionally, researchers who 
study these cultural disparities would benefit from reading, since 
this book would provide a new perspective to the immigrant 
experience. 

 
REFERENCES 

Sánchez, Erika L. 2017. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. New 
York: Random House Children’s Books. 


	Book Review: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez - Shanya A. Olivares Perez



