Jasminne Mendez didn’t speak English when she started kindergarten, and her young, white teacher thought the girl was deaf because in Louisiana, you were either black or white. She had no idea that a black girl could be a Spanish speaker.
In this memoir for teens about growing up Afro Latina in the Deep South, Jasminne writes about feeling torn between her Dominican, Spanish-speaking culture at home and the American, English-speaking one around her. She desperately wanted to fit in, to be seen as American, and she realized early on that language mattered. Learning to read and write English well was the road to acceptance.
Mendez shares typical childhood experiences such as having an imaginary friend, boys and puberty, but she also exposes the anti-black racism within her own family and the conflict created by her family’s conservative traditions. She was not allowed to do things other girls could, like date boys, shave her legs or wear heels. “I wanted us to find some common ground,” she writes about her parents, “but it seemed like we were from two different worlds, and our islands kept drifting farther and farther apart.”
Despite her father’s old-style approach to raising girls, he valued education and insisted his daughters do well in school and maintain their native language. He took his children to hear Maya Angelou speak, and hearing the poet read was a defining moment for the black Dominican girl who struggled to fit in. “I decided that if Maya Angelou could be the author of her own story and rewrite her destiny to become a phenomenal woman, then somehow, so could I.” Teens—and adults too—will appreciate reading about Mendez’s experiences coming of age in the United States as both black and Latina.
A 2023 Américas Award Commended Title
Finalist, 2023 Texas Institute of Letters Jean Flynn Award for Best Young Adult Book
“Dominican American Mendez tells her story in this compelling memoir. A strong collection of intimate essays …. from an Afro-Latina perspective.”—Kirkus Reviews
“In her first picture book, Mendez wonderfully showcases the numerous ways that food brings Latinx—in this case, Dominican—families and communities together. Presented in both English and Spanish (via Espinosa’s translation), the author’s text forgoes flair for simple earnestness in a manner that highlights the book’s themes. Likewise, De Vita’s cozy pictures provide plenty of ideal images of family, with a diverse range of skin tones from light brown to dark brown. A stirring author’s note and a recipe for habichuelas con dulce wrap up a pretty sweet tale.”—Kirkus Reviews on Josefina’s Habichuelas / Las habichuelas de Josefina
“In both her essays and lyric poems, Méndez illustrates through personal experience the haunting consequences of a divide between spirit and body. She gestures toward the necessity of resilience for people of color. And perhaps most important to the book’s development, Méndez simultaneously performs and subverts labeling, questioning its influence on identity—an investigation particularly important to ‘an Afro-Latina Dominican raised in the Deep South.’”—The Rumpus on Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry
JASMINNE MENDEZ is a Dominican-American poet, playwright and award-winning writer. She is the author of a memoir, Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry (Arte Público, 2018), and a bilingual picture book, Josefina’s Habichuelas / Las habichuelas de Josefina (Piñata Books, 2021). She lives and works in Houston, Texas.
