Author: Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Publisher: Clarion Books
Release date: March 7th 2017
Pages: 452
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Source: Purchased
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Sal has always been certain of his place with his adoptive gay father and their loving Mexican-American family. But now his own history unexpectedly haunts him, and life-altering events force him and his best friend, Samantha, to confront issues of faith, loss, and grief.
Suddenly Sal is throwing punches, questioning everything, and discovering that he no longer knows who he really is—but if Sal’s not who he thought he was, who is he?
I really appreciated Saénz's Aristotle and Dante for all the important contributions it made to YA, even if I was a little bored by the lack of plot at times, and it seems like writing really beautiful, important novels that nonetheless drag a little bit is Saénz's thing. His writing is beautiful, straight-forward but lyrical, and the characters and relationships he explores are really powerful. But even though I understand this isn't a plot-driven novel, there were points where I had to push myself to keep reading because it just felt like nothing was happening, so I have mixed feelings about this one as well.
Like in Aristotle and Dante, Saénz beautifully explores friendship and family. I loved reading about Sal's relationship with his dad, who is literally the most perfect YA dad that has ever existed. They not only have a father-son relationship but also a great friendship, and they talk about almost everything with one another. This was especially powerful in relationship to this novel's exploration of queerness and masculinity; the set-up of having Sal figure out how to stand up for and defend his father against his peers' homophobia in a way that doesn't resort to masculinist violence is really well-done. The novel also does a fantastic job of decentering biological family relations and demonstrating the importance of non-biological kinship, both between Sal and his adoptive dad and between his dad's relationship to his friends Sam and Fito, neither of whom have supportive parents and for whom he becomes a father figure. I also loved Sal's friendship with Sam and Fito, and I was especially glad that the novel showed a heterosexual guy being platonic friends with both a heterosexual girl and a gay guy that actually stays platonic. Asides from Sal's dad's storyline, there is absolutely no romance in this novel, which was great to see because of the way it allowed us to focus on family, kinship, and friendship.
While the novel does a great job of discussing masculinity and homosexuality, its discussion of race is somewhat lacking. The premise of a white boy who was adopted by a Mexican family could have opened up a lot of important conversations, and I thought the exploration of Sal's anger at being called a gringo because it limits his ability to fully feel like a part of his family is well-done. However, the message that Sal is Mexican because his family is Mexican forecloses any meaningful conversations around whiteness. Sal being culturally Mexican does not mitigate his white privilege, which is never acknowledged. Additionally, Sal's family's race is never really addressed, i.e. we know nothing about their relationships to whiteness, indigeneity, and Afro-Latinidad. This premise could have made for some important discussions of whiteness by exploring the racial anxieties of a white character who doesn't identify with whiteness, but the implications of this are left unexplored.
I wish Sam's character had had some more development over the course of the novel, and that her experience of sexual assault had been explored in more detail. Even though Sam and Sal's friendship is really beautiful, Sam can be a little irritating. She has no female friends and keeps talking about how annoying other girls are, and even though her desire for male attention is problematized throughout the novel, her disregard for other women is never discussed, and I wish we had seen some character development there. Additionally, I was really frustrated with how this novel handles sexual assault. Sam's boyfriend Eddie attempts to rape Sam at a party, and she escapes and calls Sal to come to her rescue. Later, Sal sees Sam talking to Eddie at school, and comes up to them to tell him to leave Sam alone, but Sam slaps Sal for interfering in her conversation and explains that Eddie was apologizing for "hurting" her. The message ends up being that Sal was wrong for trying to protect Sam from her attempted rapist since Eddie was apologizing, as if he obviously deserved forgiveness or as if "apologizing" for sexually assaulting someone somehow made it okay. The book also never refers to the attempted rape as attempted rape or sexual assault, but just calls it Eddie "hurting" Sam, and Sam does not at any point struggle with moving on from this experience. This might've just been because the novel is written from Sal's male perspective, but I really wish Sam's experience of sexual assault was actually addressed as such and explored as the traumatic event that it is.
Asides from these more political critiques, I just found myself a little bored at times while reading this novel. I feel a little strange calling this a character-driven and not plot-driven novel because there is actually a LOT that happens over the course of this novel, but the actual events aren't the focus; they're more so just catalysts to explore these characters and their relationships. I usually like character-driven novels, but at times this novel just dragged a little. It's 450 pages long, and even though admittedly, the chapters are really short and there's not actually as much text as you'd expect from that amount of pages, it still felt like a little much. In hindsight, I appreciate every element of the novel and wouldn't want to cut anything, but while I was reading I frequently had to push myself to keep going because it just felt slow at times.
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