Don't Ask Me Where I'm From (2020) by Jennifer de Leon

1001 Novels: A Library of America

Don't Ask Me Where I'm From (2020)

by Jennifer De Leon

Weston, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 7/30

   Don't Ask Me Where I'm From is a 2020 YA title about the experience of the high school aged US citizen daughter of two illegal immigrants from Central America. Early in the book she is selected by her urban high school to attend a ritzy high school in the suburbs. meanwhile dealing with the sudden deportation of her father at home.  I've now read more YA novels via the 1001 Novels: A Library of America project than I had in the proceeding decade plus.  I find them tedious.  Unfortunately, Don't Ask Me Where I'm From is no exception to that trend.  First, I checked out the Audiobook from the library but I literally could not take it.  I found the voice of the narrator/teen to be particularly annoying, like watching a humorless television show about high school students.  

  I don't have anything against Liliana and her background- I deal with the consequences of our broken immigration system in the federal court system on a weekly basis, talking to families EXACTLY like Liliana's, so she isn't saying I haven't heard or felt or argued in Court a million times over the past two decades.  As for her high school experience, I don't have a lot of sympathy.  I'm a full supporter of diversity, affirmative action, being cognizant of valuing different experiences etc. but not so much of high school students.  It's a tough time, I know, but would it be too much for one character in a YA title to not think that they are the center of the universe and that their particular set of problems is unique to themselves- because that it is literally every high school student in a a YA novel EVER. 

   Don't Ask Me Where I've Been is, however, the first book about Central American immigrants, which is a diversity win for the 1001 Novels: A Library of America.