¡Ándale, Prieta!: A Love Letter to My Family

by Yasmín Ramírez

Overview

This beautifully open coming-of-age memoir by a Mexican American debut writer doubles as a love letter to the tough grandmother who raised her.

When I tell people who don't speak Spanish what prieta means—dark or the dark one—their eyes pop open and a small gasp escapes... How do I tell them that now, even after the cruelty of children, Prieta means love? That each time Prieta fell from my grandmother's lips, I learned to love my dark skin.

No one calls me that anymore. I miss how her words sounded out loud.

My Ita called me Prieta. When she died, she took the name with her.

Anchored by the tough grandmother who taught her how to stand firm and throw a punch, debut author Yasmín Ramírez writes about the punches life has thrown at her non-traditional family of tough Mexican American women.

Having spent years of her twenties feeling lost—working an intensely taxing retail job and turning to bars for comfort—the blow of her grandmother's death pushes Yasmín to unravel. So she comes home to El Paso, Texas, where people know how to spell her accented name and her mother helps her figure out what to do with her life. Once she finally starts pursuing her passion for writing, Yasmín processes her grief by telling the story of her Ita, a resilient matriarch who was far from the stereotypical domestic abuelita. Yasmín remembers watching boxing matches at a dive bar with her grandmother, Ita wistfully singing old Mexican classics, her mastectomy scar, and of course, her lesson on how to properly ball your fist for a good punch. Interviewing her mom and older sister, Yasmín learns even more about why her Ita was so tough—the abusive men, the toil of almostliterally back-breaking jobs, and the guilt of abortions that went against her culture.

Expertly blending the lyrical prose of a gifted author with the down-to-earthtone of a close friend, this debut memoir marks Ramírez as a talented new author to watch. Her honesty in self-reflection, especially about periods where she felt directionless, and her vivid depictions of a mother and grandmother who persevered through hard knocks, offers vulnerable solidarity to readers who've had hard knocks of their own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947627550
Publisher:	Lee & Low Books
Publication date:	04/19/2022
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	167,410
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Yasmín Ramírez is a 2021 Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Author Fellow as well as a 2020 recipient of the Woody and Gayle Hunt-Aspen Institute Fellowship Award. Her fiction and creative nonfiction works have appeared in Cream City Review and Huizache among others. She is an Assistant Professor of English, Creative Writing, and Chicanx Literature at El Paso Community College. She stays active in the Borderplex arts community and serves on the advisory board of BorderSenses, a literary non-profit.¡Ándale, Prieta! is her first book. For more information about Yasmín, visit her website at yasminramirez.com

Read an Excerpt

At the time it seemed normal. Later I learned that most grandmas don’t teach their granddaughters to fight, especially when their granddaughters are only in first grade.

But there she was, holding her clenched fists in a fighter’s stance in front of me. “Si alguien te pega ¿qué vas a hacer?”

So—what would I do if someone punched me? “Punch them back?”

“No empieces nada, pero no te dejes, ¿eh?”

“Okay, Ita. I won’t start anything, but I won’t let myself get pushed around either.”

“Y más vale que ganes, ¿eh? Porque si no, cuando llegues a la casa te voy a poner otra chinga.”

I stared at Ita, letting her words sink in. I really don’t think she would have given me a chinga if I lost a fight, but just in case, I was definitely not going to lose.

Ita sat on the edge of the worn brown paisley couch, so I was her height. We’d moved the green marble Formica coffee table out of the way for more room. The gold cross she always wore lay shiny on her chest. It rose and fell with her breath. She wasn’t saying anything. I stared at her face, waiting. She stared back, sin sonrisa, her arched brows squished to the center. I squished my eyebrows and lips to match hers.

She took up a boxer’s stance again, but this time she opened her palms toward me. I stood ready, left foot in front, right foot back like she’d told me…

“No. Mira, Prieta.”

I glanced at my feet and then back at Ita as she stood up. She placed her feet the same as mine but bent her knees a little. “Porque así—” Mine were locked. She reached over and shoved me. I lost my balance.

“Tienes que plantarte bien para que no te tumben.”

I put my feet back where they’d been, this time with my knees bent like hers.

She shoved me again. I stayed put.

Editorial Reviews

"A hard-hitting and gorgeous debut. Yasmín Ramírez welcomes readers into the hot pink, humming, fighting, blossoming world of her El Paso childhood—and like her Grandma Ita, who looms large in these pages—Ramírez throws her punches without flinching while rendering her people and places with clear-eyed tenderness. An essential and stunning memoir." — Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread

"Yasmín Ramírez's debut memoir delicately shows us what tough lessons, and even tougher people, have to teach us about love. That how we choose to love our family, our home and culture, almost always reveals how much, or little, we actually love ourselves. Funny and smart, ¡Ándale, Prieta! is a joy to read." — Matt Mendez, author of Barely Missing Everything and Twitching Heart

"¡Ándale, Prieta! is an invitation into a home blessed with the aroma of caldio simmering on the stove. At the heart of this book is Ita, the indomitable matriarch whose scars are physical and mental and unspoken. From the point of view of her granddaughter, this unflinching memoir is a celebration of women working through the pain and earning the love in their lives. The authentic spirit of the writing is fleshed out in the landscape of El Paso, a US-Mexico border town, where cultures rest on a delicate edge, side by side, always touching. One essential lesson we learn from this extraordinary debut is the need to leave one's Home to embrace the sacred journey back to Family." — Richard Yañez, author of El Paso del Norte: Stories on the Border

"A promising debut, gripping in its honesty." — Kirkus Reviews

Américas Award Honorable Mention 2023 - Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs
International Latino Book Award Silver 2023 - Empowering Latino Futures
Recommended YA Nonfiction List 2023 - In the Margins Book Awards
Southwest Book Awards Winner 2023 - Border Regional Library Association

From the Publisher

2022-03-22
A tribute to the author’s fierce grandmother blossoms into a family saga brimming with heartache and love.

In the first part, Ramírez introduces readers to the resilient women who loomed large in her childhood in El Paso, Texas: her maternal great-grandmother, Máma Lupe; her hardworking mother, Leticia; and, above all, her fiery maternal grandmother, Ita. The fraught, tense relationship between Máma Lupe and Ita—highlighted in a spectacular chapter devoted to a day at church—exemplifies the knotty bonds that tie mother to daughter, a recurring theme. Throughout the text, Ramírez interweaves anecdotes of childhood nights spent in bars with Ita (tamer than it sounds); Ita’s poignant nightly rituals; details about Leticia’s work for Customs at the border separating El Paso and Juárez, filling the role of “the brown gatekeeper to other brown people.” The clear star of the book is Ita, an unforgettable, larger-than-life character. In one striking chapter, the author tells the stories behind the many scars that mark Ita’s body, a literal road map of the older woman’s life. Meanwhile, the men in young Ramírez’s life—an absent father, an overindulged uncle, a couple of boyfriends—make appearances as secondary characters, distant shadows at times. In the second part—in which the author moves into adolescence and young adulthood—Ita and Leticia fade into the background, and their absences dull the crackling vitality of the first half. However, it’s in the second half of the book that Ramírez crucially explores her waning relationship with her father. Her attempts over the years to reconnect—often half-hearted but always sincere—culminate in a final effort that seals their differences. Using conversational prose full of vivid imagery, the author successfully explores the many dimensions of her identity as a Mexican American woman.

A promising debut, gripping in its honesty.

Kirkus Reviews