Banned Books that Matter: An Interview with Lenny Gómez of Hijas que hablan

On the community-building power of "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter"

Recently, I said that one of the goals of this newsletter moving forward would be to highlight the value of specific books being challenged in school districts now. And when I launched this newsletter one of my ideas was to amplify the voices of young readers who can speak more directly than I can on the effects book bans have on the intended audiences of books being removed.

Today I’ll try to do both, by letting one of my recent former students, Lenny Gómez, tell the story of how Erika L. Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter helped her find her creative footing and brought her into a community that nurtured her talents and encouraged her self-expression.  

Lenny was a tenth-grader in the first class I taught at my current school, back in 2015-2016. Now 22, she’s studying psychology and communications. She’s also a creator, in several senses of the word. She has always been interested in film; last year she served as assistant director on a film project she worked on with another of my former students, Ernesto Cruz. Their collaboration, “A Salvo,” was recently selected for the Lift Off Global Network First-Time Filmmakers Showcase.

But for now you’re most likely to hear Lenny’s voice on the podcast Hijas que hablan, which Lenny helped start with three twenty-something Latinas she met in a group called Hijas Unidas. That group, in turn, was formed under the influence of Erika L. Sánchez’s 2017 novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is something of a phenomenon at my school, where many of our students, like the book’s protagonist, are daughters of Mexican immigrants. The energy of the book is captured in its title: the novel plays on the idea that, in many Mexican-American immigrant families, daughters are prescribed very specific and rigid roles—of dutifulness, subservience, self-sacrifice—and explores the way those expectations can build community but also suffocate individuals. It’s a well-written book (Sánchez is one of my favorite contemporary poets), and it deals with serious topics, including sex, alcohol and drug use, mental health, and suicide. As a result, it has been challenged as inappropriate in school districts around the country and removed from several. Notably, it was one of 30 books “paused” in nearby Leander ISD, where it had been a selection in the district’s book clubs before parents protested “obscene” books at a wild school board meeting.

As Lenny explained to me, Hijas Unidas came together when graduate student María José Hernández read I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and posted a question on social media about the tendency of Mexican daughters to live at home into early adulthood. “That kind of started a conversation,” Lenny told me, and that conversation built an online community: a discussion, a book club, and ultimately, a podcast.

The podcast just celebrated its second birthday, and it has grown in surprising ways. It’s not for the faint of heart—like the protagonist of the book that inspired it, the women of Hijas que hablan speak frankly and broach difficult topics. But they also delve deeply and intelligently into questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, and—to my absolute delight—they often use books as touchstones for their conversations.

In February, Lenny and I talked over the phone about the podcast, what else she’s doing now, book bans, and what novels can mean to a young reader. I’ve edited our conversation for clarity and length.

Anger & Clarity: With my first question I just want to catch up. Tell me what you’re doing now. What’s going on in your life?

Lenny Gómez: So, right now I work a lot, pay for school and stuff, but I’m currently trying to get a dual degree in communications and psychology. This past semester I was like, I really like psychology, I always wanted to do that when I was younger, but I also enjoy film and I want to create. So I thought, Let’s do both.

I also have the podcast, which in itself has been a crazy journey. There was a point towards the end of last year where we had to have a conversation because we were all very stressed out with it. Just because of life. And we had the scary thought, “Oh my gosh, is this is going to stop?”

In the end we decided at some point we’re probably going to have step away here and there. But if we have guests, which is something we’ve been focusing on, that way we’re not super stressed if we can’t make it or something. Last week I wasn’t able to record because of scheduling conflicts, so I just wasn’t in it, and that was fine. And that definitely has taken that stress off, because for a while it felt like it was a chore, which was never its intention. And it is a way that I’m able to express myself and I love it. One of my cohosts Brianna [Serrato] is the main editor and that felt like a chore and was super stressful for her. So we’re trying to balance it out between the three of us. There has been a learning curve because I don’t know how to edit audio. But we’re learning.

But it has been fun. I enjoy it.

We did an episode about a year ago where we talked about bodies and what that was like growing up, and recently we had somebody reach out and say they just found the podcast and they heard that episode, and how that really hit home. That was really emotional for us, because they talked about how they were super thankful that they were able to hear that about bodies and eating disorders and how that affects our communities, and how that’s just not talked about at all or you’re shamed into not talking about it, because it’s just part of our culture. But it shouldn’t be that way.

So we’re going to talk about it again, and just give an update on that because during that episode, I didn’t realize I had had an eating disorder, so I went into therapy again for that, and that in itself has been a journey. And being able to talk about that is going to be pretty cool. But it’s crazy. We didn’t think—I didn’t think—it would get to where it is. We are also talking about monetization and getting sponsors and stuff, so we’re excited. We’re really excited for it.

Would you mind taking a step back and telling us about Hijas Unidas and then the podcast, Hijas que hablan. How did you get involved in those projects?

María [José Hernández] is a graduate student. She was reading I am not your perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sánchez, so she put a question up online, like, “Why is it that many Latina girls and women stay at home?” You know, a lot of us, we stay at home—we’re in our twenties and we still live at home. Why is that?

And so that kind of started a conversation, and then she ended up saying, “I want to do something.”

And so we created Hijas Unidas. And when it started it was group of maybe twelve of us, and that was during peak COVID, like during the pandemic. Everybody was home. So that helped—a lot of people were interacting.

So you were doing Zoom calls?

Yeah, we were doing Zoom calls, we had the book club, and then we talked about having a podcast for a while, but it was just talk it wasn’t really like, “Oh, we’re really going to do it.”

And then, I think I was one of the ones who suggested we should do a podcast with another girl, but she fell through, so there was a pause. And then Brianna reached out and we started doing it.

We’ve recently changed all of our platforms to Hijas que hablan podcast, because the podcast is now more what is known. But that’s how it started. There wasn’t really any path, it was just like, let’s do that and see where it goes. It was slow in the beginning, but in this past year it’s picked up a lot more.

One of the things that I love about Hijas que hablan is that the podcast has this very youthful vibe, very young energy, it’s a little bit chaotic, but, as you said when you were talking about your Bodies episode, the conversation always turns into these deeper discussions about real social and cultural issues. And quite often you guys do reference books or come back to things you’ve read. So, can you talk to me about what books mean to you now, as a young adult?

Reading has always been a form of escape. I read a lot more when I was in middle school or early high school. Actual, physical books. I read a lot of them! My parents were arguing and stuff during that time, and I would just read, and I just was able to ignore all of my problems. And it was nice. It was a form of escape for me.

Now I read a lot of fan fiction, and it’s something that I always talk about in the podcast. But I love reading it; the writing is very good, and enthralling, and being able to re-live these characters that exist in a different way is super cool and I love that.

Sometimes, even with fan fiction, I read about certain topics that a character I love is going through and I’m able to relate to it. Like whenever my parents first got separated, that was super hard and I went through a very depressive state. And I read a lot of Marvel, and sometimes they put these characters in a situation like that, and it’s relatable, and it doesn’t make me feel so small and alone, and I enjoy that.

I’ve got a Roxane Gay quote taped on the wall of my classroom that your answer just reminded me of. She said, “Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose my self. They’ve allowed me to remember, they’ve allowed me to forget, they’ve allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds.” Is that along the lines of what you’re describing?

Yeah. I love that quote. I’ve never heard it!

Also, I’ve been reading a lot of poetry, ever since my friend Daisy gave me a book poems with notes inside. It’s funny because I hated annotating books in high school. But now I’ve been buying poetry books and writing in them.

So I wanted to see where you are now. But, because I’m a high school teacher and I’m responding to all of these books being removed from high schools, one thing I think people are overlooking is who high school students are. So another question I like to ask is: Who were you at 16, both as a reader and as a person?

I was really insecure. And I was super shy. It was very difficult because I was just figuring out who I was, and my sexuality. And that was very difficult, because that’s not something you talk about with anybody. I mean I felt like I couldn’t talk about it with anybody. And there wasn’t also very much media that showed anybody that was like me. So that made it really, really hard.

I grew up very, very Christian, and that also made it difficult. My dad had a hard time coming to terms with it, but my mom was a little more open-minded, but that was really hard, and even at that time it was very lonely. I was very lonely.

Yeah, that’s what I remember from being 16. It was a very lonely time. And so all I had was my books. And my music. That’s all I had, I felt.

What music were you listening to then?

I listened to a lot of One Direction, but if it wasn’t that it was emo, punk—super-depressing stuff, because I just felt like, “Ah! This gets me.”

When you were that age, what books did you love?

The Lightning Thief! And I’m currently re-reading it, actually. I’m currently re-reading the whole series.

Anything by Rick Riordan I loved, and I still do. I recently just re-bought all the books, and I’m re-reading them with one of my friends from school. And he’s never read them, so he’s going through them, and it’s super-cool seeing him like Oh my gosh—this happened… It’s really cool.

What would you say to someone who would say that a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old isn’t capable of handling a book like I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter?

We understand what’s going on. There is no point, because even if you don’t have those books, there’s still the internet. You can find anything on the internet. The internet is not something that parents can protect their kids from, not really. Teenagers, if they want to know something, they’re going to know. I’m taking a Media Literacy class now—it’s super interesting and I love it—and that’s something we actually just talked about in that class.

But, yeah, kids are going to know. And if they don’t, they’re going to find out from somebody else or they’re still going to have these conversations. It’s not going to stop them.

So there’s no innocence that’s being protected, and in the act of removing books, you’re taking away what you described as a sort of lifeline.

Yeah. And when you have books, and you’re being taught them, you’re able to have these conversations and have them monitored. Like when we had seminars, you had somebody, a teacher, who was guiding these conversations a certain way, but it was open.

It was safe?

Yeah.

On one of your first podcasts, the panel was talking about reading books by Latina authors, and you said, “I don’t remember doing that in school,” and that hit me, because I don’t think we really did.

Yeah, that’s also an issue. If you’re taking away these books from kids, then there’s no representation. And you’ll have more situations where someone is like, I never saw people like me or read about people like me. And that’s rough.

And it’s not just missing out on the opportunity to read, it’s also missing the opportunity to find that lifeline like you described, or to make those connections like you did with Hijas que hablan. I’ve always been moved by the story of how you found your group through a book.

Yeah, whenever I tell people that, I sometimes think, “Wow—we came together through a book.”