Amalia is hate crimed.Amid various party-related plotlines (Amalia and Isabel are planning a party for their family, Sunny and Ducky are planning a going-away party for Dawn as she prepares to spend another summer in Stonybrook), Amalia is assaulted by some drunk girls who call her racist names and spit on her. She is shaken to her core. She's never experienced such open hatred based on her race. She feels diminished and disillusioned. In the end, she realizes/decides that dignity isn't something that can be taken from you, but something you have inside. On the one hand, I think that racism is an appropriate topic for kids' books and that they need to learn about it--both for kids who've experienced the effects firsthand and for those who haven't--and I like that this isn't Amalia's first book, we're not being introduced to her as The Latina One, she's just one of the gang and we've been in her head before and this attack seems to come out of left field and be totally irrelevant to who she is and what's important about her, and that is all correct. I do feel that pre-teen books from the 90s tend to present racism in extremely hamfisted way. "The racists" are openly evil, just outright saying nakedly racist stuff, which I mean happens, but we never see the everyday racism: the microaggressions, the effects of systemic/institutional stuff, the more subtle feelings of inadequacy at being compared to white standards of beauty, the hopelessness of lacking role models, the loneliness at being the only Latina or Black woman in the room (or, in Amalia's case every time she's at Maggie's: you and the maid are the only Latina women in the room). These books openly and explicitly present a worldview where race is such a non-issue in everyday life and the only time it comes up is in these moments of cartoonish, KKK-style racism. It's where we were in the 90s, I guess, but it's frustrating, because it promotes the erroneous idea that white people who DON'T attack people in the street can comfort themselves that they are doing all they can do and they can just sit back and consider themselves perfect anti-racist princes.Oh, well. I guess that's a pretty heavy rant to lay at the feet of this book. Which was fine, I guess. The party-planning antics were a little boring to me, but it provided a light counterpoint to the serious main plotline. Highlights: Amalia's illustration of the Krebs cycle.The Ambiguously Gay Ducky: Amelia is frustrated that none of her friends can understand what she's going through because they are white. Except: "Maybe Ducky, a little bit. The boys make fun of him for being different--but that's just because of his mannerisms and the way he dresses and the fact that he hates sports."One for the ambiguity pile: Amalia weirdly and seriously appears to assume that Sunny and Ducky are dating. "...those two make such a cute couple... They have what it takes, Nbook. Not Brendan and me." I'd let the "cute couple" comment pass as a joke if she didn't seem to seriously be sad that they are better at dating than Amelia and her boyfriend. No they're not, Amalia! They are clearly not attracted to each other, even leaving aside Ducky's ambiguous sexuality. They have each explicitly stated that they are not attracted to each other. Amalia describes her day at the beach with Dawn, Sunny, Maggie, and Ducky as "laughter and swimming and volleyball and boy-watching." (Respectively?)Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis, a white man.Timing: May 25 to June 19Revised Timeline: We're coming up on the third summer post-grad. At one point, while studying for her finals, Amelia jokes that she'll be in eighth grade forever. If only you knew!
