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A review by newbatteri
They Could Have Named Her Anything by Stephanie Jimenez
5.0
From my editor’s letter:
What’s in a name? For seventeen-year-old Maria Anís Rosario, her name is a reminder of a woman struggling to live up to expectations, to a life bifurcated. There’s the Maria with a soft r to her white classmate Rocky, at her private high school on the Upper East Side where Maria is one of the few Latinas in a sea of flat-ironed hair and effortless wealth. Then there’s the accented María to her boyfriend, Andres, and at home a world away in Queens, in a cramped but homey apartment with her lively family. How does she reconcile both parts when Rocky opens her up to a whole new life she previously didn’t have access to?
Meanwhile, Maria and Rocky’s fathers are each making their own series of calculations for the cost of their family’s happiness—Maria’s father, Miguel, sacrificing his happiness for the sake of appearing strong to his children after he loses his job; Rocky’s father, Charlie, choosing hedonism as his marriage crumbles from within. These four protagonists are flawed yet hopeful, and they leap off the page with heartfelt expectations and skewed realities, each questioning what it means to live up to the roles you’ve been given.
Poetically and truthfully grappling with racial tension, class privilege, female friendship, and familial expectations, Stephanie Jimenez’s They Could Have Named Her Anything is a propulsive debut novel from a fresh new voice.
What’s in a name? For seventeen-year-old Maria Anís Rosario, her name is a reminder of a woman struggling to live up to expectations, to a life bifurcated. There’s the Maria with a soft r to her white classmate Rocky, at her private high school on the Upper East Side where Maria is one of the few Latinas in a sea of flat-ironed hair and effortless wealth. Then there’s the accented María to her boyfriend, Andres, and at home a world away in Queens, in a cramped but homey apartment with her lively family. How does she reconcile both parts when Rocky opens her up to a whole new life she previously didn’t have access to?
Meanwhile, Maria and Rocky’s fathers are each making their own series of calculations for the cost of their family’s happiness—Maria’s father, Miguel, sacrificing his happiness for the sake of appearing strong to his children after he loses his job; Rocky’s father, Charlie, choosing hedonism as his marriage crumbles from within. These four protagonists are flawed yet hopeful, and they leap off the page with heartfelt expectations and skewed realities, each questioning what it means to live up to the roles you’ve been given.
Poetically and truthfully grappling with racial tension, class privilege, female friendship, and familial expectations, Stephanie Jimenez’s They Could Have Named Her Anything is a propulsive debut novel from a fresh new voice.