Fiebre Tropical Quotes

“I read every single one of them in my head as an airhead—simple, basic, pendeja. Estas pobres estúpidas”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Maybe if I just played that song she’d remember the steps, maybe if “I Saw the Sign” just randomly played and Mami just randomly happened to hear it she’d drop everything and throw her hands in the air and call me with her index finger.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Even La Tata met with the Madre Superiora after finding Mami’s notebooks dripping with worm goo, the nun’s response a mere We’re doing everything we can, señora. But, you know, girls tease each other. Indignant, La Tata knew this had everything to do with the monies. Everything to do with becoming a no one in a city built for someones. The frustration overwhelming, and before she could stop herself, a Váyase a comer mierda monja hijueputa sped out of her mouth.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“La Tata’s eyes conjuring a memorized motherly anger, the same anger brought on her by her sick mother, by the vecinas, by her patronizing sisters, an anger spilling out of every single mother, a rehearsed womanly conviction, a learned frown, hands arched on hips, pursed lips, eyes vaguely shut vibrating to the rhythm of the vocal cords—the posture of every Colombian mother, a hologram passed on through generations to land on the next girl’s body in a Now you are gonna tell me ahora mismito where carajos are you getting all that money y ay Myriam del Socorro Juan that you lie to me. Y agárrate muela picá que lo que viene es candela. Myriam”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Le dije, Mami ni muerta am I wearing that dress— She stopped me halfway and said, You haven’t even looked at it closely. It is so bello, ¿verdad, Lucía? Look how bello y en descuento. You haven’t tried it on, nena. Try it on, ven pa’ acá.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Pablito lecturing me about not taking shit seriously. The same dude playing marathons of World of Warcraft and bidding on miniature Batman figurines on eBay. Are you going to try and convert me? he said. I want to see you try.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“didn’t want to see it. I pretended to not see her puffed-up eyes, greasy hair, and just thanked her and chewed on my sandwich.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Because women are like cars, the moment they step out of the car dealership with a macho inside they lose value by the second.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“After that afternoon with Carmen a weight lifted off my shoulders. The black curtain between her and me, between Mami and me, lifted. We were acting in the same play of life. We now shared a ground fertile with prayer, inner peace, and sacred devotion.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Plus Myriam returned with a different air that screamed nerdy nerd please bully me all over that recuperating cuerpazo (a cuerpazo building slowly but surely), with the uniform now past the knee,”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“I knew money was so tight, I knew we barely paid rent, I knew every time we talked about budgeting homegirl landed on the Apocalipsis just in time to avoid explaining why the Pastores had bought our groceries that week. Mamá, just tell me we don’t have money, I whispered angry. And that, mi reina, is how the Apocalipsis talk”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Whenever it rained in Bogotá (which, reina linda, every day), Mami said it was God crying, and my father replied, No no, Myriam, it’s Dios pissing on us. It’s His revenge. Tropical fever. Tropical revenge.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Well, entonces? Excuse me, Francisca, but if you abhor that institution, as you claim you do, then it seems contradictory that you care about this Carmen girl?”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“He was not a secret DAS agent or a senator snorting paramilitary money or a good machito grinding corn for arepas on Sundays for his family. Homeboy was there and then he wasn’t. Nevertheless, Myriam del Socorro Juan, a.k.a La Mami Mayor, took it to heart to tattoo the pain all over her face as a reminder that my dad was an asshole.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“He would later blame his parents for his failed social life, his addiction to porn, and even his foot fetish.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Nobody was paying for us to become more womanly and therefore more desired by the higher ranks of the church. And thus began the jealousy roller-coaster ride. All of us with hungry tentacles stretching out onto her body. Everyone took turns running their fingers along her silky cheek, commenting on her newly acquired beauty. She seemed thrilled with all the attention, nodding and repeating, I’ve wanted this all my life, I’ve wanted this all my life.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Can’t you see she got no job, she got no house, she got no man, but motherfucker she has a clipboard and a dead baby waiting to be baptized. And not even the rain could ruin Mami’s show; this time, only this time, she was the ultimate power. Let Diosito know that He can run every show but Mami runs this house.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“In a five-to-one female-to-male ratio familia, everyone knew the size of each other’s nipples, commented on each other’s cellulite and stretch marks like they were another set of accessories”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Satan, apparently, was also everywhere in hiding, waiting for the right time to jump your ass with booty calls, loud music, and marijuana.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Homegirl was not a kind, warm, hospitable costeña but a sharp dictatorial female whose smile was less an invitation than a mandatory law.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“English, I would learn, could be a powerful condescending tool.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Where was that feeling of grandiosity and fullness? Where was that sense of superiority that we’d briefly felt the moment we told everyone in Bogotá we were moving to the United States”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“The story? Sebastián was Mami’s first baby, the one and only boy, never born to bloom into a muchacho. Whenever she retells the Horrible Miscarriage Story, thick lines appear on her forehead, she stops every other sentence to catch her breath. Her voice recedes.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“The nuns made sure there wasn’t the slightest possibility of provocation or desire that could awaken the evils of boy temptation, which only existed outside of school, while we respectable teenagers—an endangered species—were protected by the tackiest most unfashionable pieces of clothing ever invented. As if someone’s barf had become the color palette of choice.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Between phone calls Mami gave us The Eye: the ultimate authoritative wide-open flickering of lashes with an almost imperceptible tilt of the head that had us on our feet and running. She did the same thing whenever the nuns sent home a disciplinary letter back in Bogotá, searching for my guilt, and I tried to resist, daring myself to withstand The Eye for as long as I could but always failing.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“We wanted to slap her a little because we still believed that underneath this new layer of holiness there was the pious Catholic neurotic we’d known so well.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“soaking in Jesús’s Evangelical Christian blessing, believed, like the rest of the Miami matriarchy, that Catholic priests were a bunch of degenerados, buenos para nada. Catholicism is a fake and boring religion. Christianity is the true exciting path”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Girlfriend was pissed. She hadn’t come to the U S of A to kill ants and smell like puto pescado, and how lovely would it have been if the housekeeper could have joined us on the plane?”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“Outside, the sky in all its fury released buckets of water that swayed with the palm trees. El cielo gris, oscuro. Talk about goth. Right at noon the sky transformed itself from orange light to chunky black clouds that gave zero fucks about your beach plans or the three hours you spent ironing that hair, splaying all its sadness right in front of you.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical

“In my heart I knew the dissonance my body felt every time I wore a dress, a kind of stickiness.”
― Juli Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical