Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Skillfully blending memoir and social science, Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) explores the quinceañera, the coming-of-age ceremony for Latinas turning 15. She spent a year researching and attending quince celebrations, finding out what rituals are favored and what they mean to the girls. She researched what the gowns and photo sessions cost. She interviewed people working in the quince industry, from party planners to cake bakers. After all, with more than 400,000 American Latinas turning 15 every year, and with the average quinceañera costing $5,000, the financial, if not the cultural importance of the quince should not be underestimated. Alvarez structures her book around one particular girl's ceremony, from the dreamy planning stages through the late hours of the actual, dizzying affair. By intercutting the party narrative with stories from her own youth, Alvarez reminds herself—and readers—that at some point we were all confused, histrionic adolescents. Both sympathetic and critical, she doesn't dismiss the event as a waste of hard-earned savings or as a mere display of daughters for the marriage market; nor does she endorse it as the essential cultural tradition connecting Latinas to their roots. Instead, Alvarez wants readers to focus on creating positive, meaningful rites of passage for the younger generation.
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From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Luz Lazo

Being "muy Latina," I came up with a quinceañera plan a few months before turning 15. I picked an elegant five-tier pink-and-white cake, a pretty-as-a-princess dress and the music to which I'd walk out on the dance floor, the super-sweet "Tiempo de Vals" by Puerto Rican heartthrob Chayanne. I added up the names of my closest friends -- and some not so close -- until I had 14 chambelanes and 14 damas for my imaginary quinces party.

I didn't ever get that big fiesta, but my dream plan -- which I am sure is shared by many other girls of Latin heritage -- was my way of saying, hey, this tradition is mine!

In Once Upon a Quinceañera, a fascinating, exhaustively researched book about the celebration of a girl's coming of age, bestselling novelist Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent and In the Time of the Butterflies, studies the ancient ritual that unites the U.S. Latino community and is rapidly evolving and spreading across ethnic lines.

The quinceañera party, with its throng of family and friends, shines a happy light on the 15-year-old Latina as she moves from childhood to womanhood. The obligatory ingredients -- a family's nostalgic memories of her growing up, a priest's blessing, the "court" of friends in tuxedos and gowns, the opening dance with her father -- immerses a Latina girl in the fantasy that she is a princess, if only for one day. The ritual announces she is now old enough to shave her legs, wear makeup and heels and begin life as full-fledged woman.

Alvarez focuses on the quinceañera of Monica Ramos, a Dominican-American who lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., just miles from where Alvarez spent her adolescence. Monica's fiesta is far from perfect. The parents arrive late, the limousine driver gets lost in the neighborhood, Monica almost misses the church blessing, the photographer cancels at the last minute and then shows up with what seems to be a prehistoric camera.

Every chaotic moment, every misstep and catastrophe makes the event even more special to Ramos and her family, and prompts Alvarez to remember her own coming of age. Between chapters, sometimes to disorienting effect, she narrates her experience growing up in the 1960s "in a USA just beginning to wake up to its own identity as a multicultural country with women and minorities demanding equal rights." Alvarez's family was the only Dominican household in the barrio, and as she tried to learn a new language and adjust to the American way of life, she studiously avoided most of the traditions that connected her with her latinidad. She didn't have a quinceañera.

Now, she finds that with a growing Latino population in the United States, this tradition has a strong positive aspect: It binds Hispanics together. You might be Honduran, but you can hire Andean flutes, have a full court of 14 chambelanes and damas -- believed to be a Mexican practice -- and follow the Puerto Rican tradition of changing from flat shoes to heels. Some girls, including Monica, are now combining the Latino ritual with the Sweet 16 parties common in the United States.

Despite numerous interviews with experts and citations to nearly every book and article she could dig up about quinceañeras, Alvarez doesn't quite come to a conclusion about the tradition. On the one hand, she points out that it has become part of American consumer culture. The parties can be far too expensive -- costing more that $5,000 in some cases. "It is outrageous to throw the house out the window for a one-night party. Money that could well be spent by a working-class family on education or mortgage payments." Her question is: Is it necessary to spend so much money to keep a tradition alive? Or worthwhile? It's not an irrelevant concern, given the statistics Alvarez cites, showing that young Latinas "are topping the charts for all sorts of at-risk behaviors: from teen pregnancy to substance abuse to dropping out of high school. What is going on? We are crowning them princesses and meanwhile the statistics are showing a large number of our young girls headed for poverty and failure!"

Even so, says Alvarez, the quinceañera is an opportunity to bring together mothers and daughters, females of a whole family -- sometimes an entire community. When the quinceañera's court rehearses the waltz and the family gathers in the kitchen to prepare the food for the party, there's a feeling of belonging. "That oneness, that empowering feeling of being a part of an ongoing transmission," says Alvarez, "is what the tradition ritualizes, why quinceañeras are not just about the girls but about community, why they can enrich all of us."And that, of course, is the point.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (August 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670038733
• ISBN-13: 978-0670038732
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #619,830 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not what I was looking for, but good nonetheless, September 23, 2007

By	Kendra Perrin "big box pro" (Corpus Christi, TX) - See all my reviews

I just finished the book Once upon a Quinceanera by Julia Alvarez. I picked it up, hoping to gain more insight into the rituals and religious significance of the quince. When I've said this to people, they almost always tell me something to the effect of, "oh, that's easy. It's a hispanic girl's coming-of-age." Yeah. No kidding? I'm looking for a little more depth here.

If my encounters' answer was too vague (not to mention obvious), Alvarez's response was way too deep. It was not so much about the celebration itself, but more of an examination of the issues adolescent girls face in the US in general, compounded by the additional issues particular to young latinas. It was a very interesting study in the success and failure of said girls, feminism minus man-hating, and the pros and cons of the quinceanera. But not as an outsider looking in. Alvarez herself had a difficult time finding the balance between being the good Dominican girl, and pursuing her own dreams and interests-loyalty to la familia, pursuing her education and being an intellectual, staying afloat professionally in a male-dominated time where it was difficult to be hispanic, let alone a woman.

Though it was not what I was looking for, I liked it. Though I myself am not hispanic, I found myself identifying with Alvarez throughout the book. It was interesting and entertaining.

-kendra
Big Box Pro Video Productions
Corpus Christi, Texas

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful look at a tradition that is holding steadfast but changing at the same time, January 16, 2008

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

Award-winning novelist Julia Alvarez has turned her gift for human analysis toward some very real young people in ONCE UPON A QUINCEANERA, a probing and utterly readable look into the tradition of the "quinceanera," the coming-of-age party celebrated by Latina women around the globe.

In the wake of MTV's success with sweet 16 shows (in which young girls and their families spend wedding-sized amounts of money on a party where the bling outweighs any cultural significance the occasion might have) and the growing cost of a decent Bat/Bar Mitzvah in these concerned-with-wealth times in America, Alvarez looks at families, native and immigrant, who are still living below the well-to-do line and yet spend upwards of a year's mortgage payments or college tuition to make sure that their young daughter enters the "adult" world in style.

It's not just the money that disturbs Alvarez. Having come to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic around the time that she would have celebrated her own coming-of-age, she watches anxiously and sometimes enviously upon girls who don't seem to understand why this tradition is so important to young Latinas. Viewing it only as that --- a giant bling-filled party to impress their friends --- takes away from the rich traditions built into the ceremonies of the quinceanera: the changing of her shoes from flats to heels during the party, signifying her march into adulthood; the doll she carries, the last vestige of childish pursuits she's allowed to enjoy; and the church ceremony, where her grown-up responsibilities are acknowledged before God and the community.

Alvarez, who never had her own quince, delves with planners and family members into what, if anything, they remember from their own quinces and how they might incorporate the more stealthy values associated with the rituals into these girls' lives. When she speaks with the young women themselves, it's clear that most of them look upon this as their moment to become a "princess" --- indeed, one has her friends dress like Disney princess characters --- and that the money and energy that their parents, some of whom are struggling in this harsh economic system, are putting into this event is their right. They are, for good or bad, like the average American teen who thinks Beyonce is queen of the world and Jay-Z, her prince, is exactly what everyone should be looking for.

At times, it's devastating to read the accounts of how these children are so expectant but don't really understand the changes that this bash is supposed to represent --- and it's clear that Alvarez finds it sad as well. Traditions maintained are supposed to mean something --- but in present-day America, they can be just another excuse to act like overgrown kids or irresponsible adults. She keeps her cool and withholds serious judgment on these children of American entitlement, recognizing with poignancy the struggles of their parents to hold on to dear cultural strengths while trying to assimilate into the broader Bush-driven selfishness and extravagance.

The book's most appealing moments come from Alvarez's descriptive look at the craziness surrounding the day of the event and from her own recollections of growing up in the same area in Queens where she follows one family through this intense experience.

ONCE UPON A QUINCEANERA is a wonderful look at a tradition that is holding steadfast but changing at the same time. And, most of all, it's about the difficult job mothers and fathers have raising beautiful young daughters in these superficial times.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and Entertaining, April 6, 2009

By	Y. Morales "La Tua Cantante Boricua" (College Park, MD) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA (Hardcover)

I am a student at the University of Maryland in College Park and read this book for an American Studies class. We had to choose a book to write a review about, but the book had to be a testimonio of sorts. I chose this book because I thought it would be interesting to learn a little more about the Quinceanera tradition. I am a Latina myself and I cannot say that I knew a lot about the history of the tradition before reading this book.
The book was an eye-opener when it comes to the life of young Latinas growing up in the United States today. I am one of them and even I did not realize some of these things. I did not know that Latina women are at the top of the statistic charts when it comes to high risk behavior like drugs, alcohol, and teenage pregnancy. Alvarez does an amazing job of using the Quinceanera tradition and showing various themes throughout the book. For example, what does a Quinceanera instill in a young Latina? When one thinks about it, it really does encourage the young to girl marry, have children, and be a devoted wife and mother. It does not really encourage the girl to be truly independent and value things like education. Even the father of the young girl who Alvarez follows in the novel mentions this when he says that, "Years ago, you hoped to be able to give your daughter a wedding. Today, though, you don't know if they are ever going to get married or just live with the guy like they do here. Why not give them something like that while we can?" And that something for them is the Quinceanera.
I really recommend this book, especially to young Latinas growing up in the U.S., it is great in terms of learning a lot more about the history of the Quinceanera. However, the book is truly great is showing how difficult is truly is to be a young Latina coming of age in the United States.