American Chica is a memoir of a Peruvian/American girl who grew up in the 50’s.  Her parents met in college in the US, then  moved to Peru just before their first child was born. The majority of this book takes place in Peru where Arana recalls her early childhood.  For the better part of 14 years the family lived in Peru surrounded by her fathers family, his country’s cultural and political beliefs, and a Catholic Latin world view.  After 14 years, the family moves back the United States where the life style and world view are quite different. Arana’s  writing style is very easy to read and kept me reading the book at every opportunity.    While there were some things I could certainly relate to, perhaps because of the time period during which it takes place, the experience might be a bit removed for the younger reader.  I think that perhaps a reader of my parents’ generation  would be able to connect with her experience a little more closely.

What initially drew me to this book was that like me Arana has a Latino father and an Anglo American mother.  One major aspect of her story that I found very interesting was how it seemed that Arana was affected by the experience of watching one parent navigating through a culture that is totally different from their own.  For the first 9 years of her life, her mother was the outsider, but then the family moved to the states where her mother now became the person in her native culture and her father was now the foreigner.   This interested me greatly because it made me think about my own parents.  My mother was living abroad when she met my father and I was born in a country that was not hers. What was it like for my mother who was still learning the language as she was meeting my father’s family?  What was it like for her being in a different country and having her first child? Was it similar at all to Arana’s mothers experience?  Likewise what was it like for my father to be married to a foreigner?  What was it like for him meeting my mothers family for the first time and not speaking the language? What did he experience when we moved to the states? What was her experience?  Having moved to the states so young, I have only ever remembered my father as the foreigner.  What would it have been like for me if we had gone and lived in Guatemala for that year or two when I was in high school?  Would I have seen my parents differently now that I was old enough to witness the one becoming foreign again and the other becoming native again? What would that have done to my understanding of my parents in this bicultural relationship they had going?

Other questions that were brought up in my mind that I would love to find out more about relate to Maria’s transition to another culture.  I would have been very interested to hear more about her high school years, her coming of age and college  years. How, if at all, did her Peruvian-ness affect her American-ness?  Did she feel she “lost” part of one while taking in the other?  Is her story an example of an older generation of mixed heritage person where they decide to be one or the other or is it more like younger mixed heritage folks?   Did she feel she could shift between the two depending on the situation, or was there a place in between in between where she resided?

During my journey to find myself and what it means to be a biracial/bicultural person I have often thought only of what MY experience has been, or what my parents thought of ME as a biracaial/bicultural person.  I have not often taken the time to think about what it was like for them as they worked to live in cultures that was not theirs to begin with.  This book has certainly made me want to talk to my parents more about their experiences living with each other and how, as Arana puts it, they built a bridge between two cultures.

I liked this book for several reasons. The first reason, was that Elliot’s style for this book was a combination of personal accounts of experiences with race combined with theory and research. For me this made the book accessible to people who may not be that well versed in theories of mixed-race identity. For those who deal with theory and research more regularly, I think the way he presented the materials not only gave it an academic credibility, but also added a human dimension which is so important to this kind of research.

The second reason I liked this book is that even though he is mixed black/white and talks about his own experiences and some of the issues specific to that population, he is able to stop and say, while this is my experience, the experience of other individuals who are mixes of different heritages may have other experiences. This is important to do so that people who are reading this material understand that the mixed heritage population is not all the same. Another thing that he does in relation to shedding light on the variety of experiences, is to point out that mixed people of different generations have had very different experiences.

One section in particular (Part 3- Backdrop of History) did a great job of talking about the history of the black/white mix in America, some of the issues of power and the changes in construction of race, and most importantly discussed the One Drop Rule. This is something that I think more people need to know about as it is something that has affected us all whether we know it or not.

I would recommend this book to all audiences as I think that everyone could get something from this book.

A couple of the key issues talked about include, issues of colorism that are found in the African American community (ie being light skinned vs dark skinned) and how that came into play when she was in fact mixed black/white. The differences of experiences growing up between her and her brother. The differences she talked about were both the the ways in which siblings may have a difference of experience in general just because they are look different or have different life experiences with regards to race, and then also talked about how gender came into play with the experience of being mixed race. And how parents choose to deal with the questions their children bring home. Some parents have a great understanding of what their children go through. Other parents don’t see their children as anything different than themselves and thus offer solutions to problems that worked for them.
The sense of humor that she brings to her work, for me, serves to show that mixed race people are not broken by default. We have experiences due to our heritages that others might not understand, and they ways in which we are taught to cope with them, may be difficult, but they may be funny. Its the same as any other aspect of growing up. And for this I thank her. I think that she offers a great portrait of a person who has grown up and had to work through questions of race/ethnicity/gender and so forth, and come to an identity that she is comfortable with on her terms.

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