More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“She says it’s time we learned that family is forever and that won’t change,” I told my cousins. “But it’s going to be up to us to stay close.”
My world had fallen apart last night, and I needed my primas to help me put it back together.
“Be empowered, Erica. Be the chingona of your own life.”
Welita had said that if she’d cried in front of her, then the woman would have known the power she’d had over her. She’d always told us that people who hurt us don’t deserve our tears.
Not because I wasn’t proud of my Mexican heritage. Sometimes I was just too tired to defend it. Even in the first grade, I learned it was much easier if you didn’t talk with an accent and didn’t bring egg burritos to school for lunch.
As a kid, I was ashamed about not being white enough. But as an adult, I was ashamed for not being Mexican enough. In fact, I was so not Mexican that a privileged white racist asshole felt comfortable enough to date me.
When will you learn that living with something you don’t love is not living at all?”
Back then I thought it was his responsibility to make me happy. I knew different now.
A gift is a gift, and you should always be grateful for anything someone gives you out of love. The day you tell someone what to give you is the day you no longer get gifts out of love, but rather obligation. Well, for me, I’d rather have the love.”
I just think that sometimes holding on to only the bad things that happened to us leaves us too tired to enjoy the good.”
My family included some of the nosiest, most frustrating, most meddling people around. But I loved every single one of them.
Sometimes, you find the strength to do what scares you most if you believe your life will be better because of it.”
Holding on to the past doesn’t always help you in the future.”
Welita, on the other hand, had fought to overcome so many obstacles in her life. She did what needed to be done and made sure her voice was always heard. She was a force to be reckoned with, a tsunami even.
It’s funny how you only come to appreciate things when it’s time to leave them behind.
Maybe this baby wouldn’t have a father, but it would have a family. We would never be alone.
I realized then that Welita’s legacy wasn’t the recipes she had left behind on those yellowed and frayed index cards. It was all of us. It was family.
“But what I want you to remember is that wherever you live, you always need to find a way to stay close with your cousins. Friends will come and go. But your family, tu familia, is forever.”
But I knew now that we could get through anything as long as we always remembered what she’d taught us—family is the most important thing in the world.
She taught us that faith and family were the two most important things in life,
