Once Upon a Quinceanera

Starred review from April 30, 2007
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.

July 1, 2007
Across Latin America, families celebrate girls' 15th birthdays with elaborate, culturally loaded parties. With burgeoning Latino communities, the quinceañ eraor quince (the term describes both the teenager and her fiesta)has emigrated to the United States. Acclaimed novelist and essayist Alvarez ("How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents") traveled from Queens to Miami to San Antonio, attending parties and meeting teenagers, their families, representatives of the growing quince service industryphotographers, seamstresses, and party plannersand researchers and activists interested in the condition of today's young Latinas. With high levels of poverty and relatively low expectations for career and financial success, the outlook for Latina teens can be as grim as their quinces are hopeful, resplendent with poufy dresses, extravagant cakes, and symbolic last dolls. Alvarez contemplates the tensions inherent in the ritual: a celebration of young women as princesses, informed by patriarchal worldviews; a bank-busting bash for financially insecure families; a traditional ritual drawing from disparate cultures and influenced by supersized, web-based U.S. lifeways. Alvarez considers her own rocky coming-of-age and the deeply mixed messages of the contemporary quinceañ era but cannot deny the joy of the 15 year olds themselves as they relish their once-in-a-lifetime fiestas. This thoughtful study is recommended for public libraries.Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington Libs., OH

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2007
Alvarez, a much-loved authorSaving the World (2006) is her most recent noveloffers an insightful look at the Latino tradition of the quinceanera, an elaborate, ritualized fiesta on a girls fifteenth birthday. Though she arrived in the U.S. from the Dominican Republic in the early 1960s, shortly before her own coming-of-age, Alvarez never had a quince. Intrigued with the tradition, she has now made up for missing hers byimmersing herself in thispopular rite of passage for a year, traveling to various Latino communities in the U.S. anddocumenting all the details of the quince: the mandatory limo, the photographer, the court and their professionally choreographed dances, the cake, and, above all, the gown. She also delves into the history of the ritual itself, from Mayan ceremonies to Spanish balls, and the reasonsthe quinceanera is thriving today in the U.S., especially as a wayfor girls to keep in touch with their culture. Alvarez enlivens the discussion with flashbacks to her own adolescence in Queens, adding another facet to her enlightening look at an important event in the lives of Latinas in America.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)