Gabi: A Girl in Pieces

Quintero, I (2014)Gabi: A Girl in Pieces. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press.
Isabel Quintero tells this fiction humorous coming of age story of diversity  written through the diary of a girl named Gabi.  Gabi is a Mexican American girl in her senior year of high school who writes poetry, call herself fat, gets a boyfriend and is a great student.  One of her best friend becomes pregnant after being raped and eventually has the baby.  Another friend couch surfs at her home because he was kick out for telling his father and family he was gay. She lives in California with her parents and siblings. Her mother is pregnant again and her father is a drug addict that overdoses and dies during her senior year of high school. Her brother is younger and treated better because he is a boy and boys have more freedom than girls in their culture.  She fills out college applications and is accepted into Berkeley but mom does not want her to leave home.  She has sex for the first time with on her prom night with Martin her boyfriend. At the end of the book she beats up the boy who raped Cindy her best friend and is expelled from school and even though it does not affect her college acceptance she is not allowed to walk at graduation.  In this story I noticed a great deal of hispanic culture throughout the story.  Girls are not treated equal to boy and are not expected to go to college.  You will understand why she describes the ways of girls becoming pregnant so young as the teen mom statistic.  Make sure to read her  very entertaining "to do list" called "I SWEAR".   Other books by this author are Ugly Cat & Pablo, My Papi has a Motorcycle, and Photographic The Life of Graciela Iturbide.