Breathe In, Breathe Out

"Feminism. I'm new to it. The word still sounds weird and wrong. Too white, too structured, too foreign: something I can't claim." 

Juliet Milagros Palante is a bit lost, but she's desiring to be found.

She's a 19-year-old queer Latina that feels out of pocket in her Bronx community and the world at large. She hasn't exactly come out to her family (or more so to herself), and she's unsure of where she stands in a relationship with a girl whom she met in a gender studies class. Juliet also constantly struggles with how feminism and queerness work, especially when these things weren't created to include her brown body and voice in mind. She consults the pages of a feminist tome called Raging Flower, and feels she has found her literary lifeline and she-ro in its author, a feminist icon by the name Harlowe Brisbane, as both have opened Juliet to questioning her view of life on a deeper level than she ever thought possible.

So moved by the book, she is compelled one day to write to Harlowe and express her feelings. Juliet is beside herself when Harlowe writes back and invites Juliet to make a trek to her homestead in Portland, Oregon, where she has a summer internship awaiting her. With little trepidation, Juliet accepts the invitation, and goes forth, hoping to seek and find herself.

There is much to celebrate within a book like Juliet Takes A Breath. Not only for the queer Latina protagonist with a compelling voice that trumpets not just fierceness but vulnerabilities as well, we're also privy to a melting pot of personalities, cultural pride, sex positivism, and motivational dialogue that gives you that warm and fuzzy fight the power feeling. It's radical as fuck. It's intersectional as fuck. It's proud as fuck. It's truly one of the few works of fiction I can think of that confronts how feminism isn't a default code word for "white women only", as author Gabby Rivera has crafted a world where many characters are exploring how their sexuality, ethnicity, and gender intersect, and do it all without compromise. Such grounding for a book is refreshing and bold to read, and should be championed more in fiction, especially young adult fiction.

As this is a book for young adults, I understand that this book was designed to be as a primer of sorts for those whom like Juliet are attempting to wade through the contradictory waters of feminism and find themselves within the movement. If I was in my teens reading this, I would've been enthralled, and savoring the range of topics, characters, and communities mentioned, getting a nice taste of what living that intersectional life can be like, and should be like. The message of evolving as an individual is strong here, and that is oh so important. Still, my thirty-something self felt that for the diversity dreamscape Rivera has crafted, that she didn't exactly provide her younger readers with something with a bit more sustenance.


At first, I had praised this book in the beginning for it diverting away from sweeping grandstands when Juliet embarks on her quest for feminist enlightenment, but I spoke too soon, as the book often marches on its soapbox. Subtlety is just not this book's strong suit, which is fine as Juliet's unfiltered dialogue gave her character, but such informality led to the story itself being eroded. It often reads like a textbook, where a term is mentioned and then half a page is taken up explaining said term.

Most of the characters aren't developed to be people, but are figure-heads there to spout off gender studies dialogue in conversation, which didn't seem natural to me. For such a racially diverse cast it is criminal that they even border on being stereotypes, still whittled down to their ethnicity as they are in place to mostly speak for their race and the struggle within. Everyone is just too on-the-nose that at times I felt like I was reading a satire, not a character study.

The presentation of feminism in this book is also just a little...off, even troublesome to me.

Feminism is not a pow-wow of women who come together to bash men, light candles, and explore their vaginas. As much as calling out the patriarchy, self-care, and celebrating body and sexual positivity are essential to the movement, they aren't the main course. Harlowe and her friends, for being such radicals, aren't protesting or grounding their existence into realistic goals and proactive solutions. It's great to have safe spaces, where you can thrive as yourself and without intrusion of the opposite sex (and honestly I didn't miss the lack of men in this book...), just that I never felt like Juliet was challenged as the worlds she was in were terribly insulated.

Juliet's internship with Harlowe is just so worthless as it is never clear what Harlowe wants her to do aside from look up the names of women she's scribbled on scraps paper at the library. All these "progressive" women around Juliet were doing nothing but engaging in writing workshops, eating tofu, hugging trees, and having hair shearing parties. Nothing is challenged. Nothing is progressed. Nothing is fought. There are no attempts of a city-wide rally to end sexism in the workplace. No road tripping to Middle America to educate women there about birth control. No volunteering at battered women’s shelters. No community outreach whatsoever. Not a one livelihood is threatened. These characters had segregated themselves into a Lesbian La La Land outright defeating the definition and purpose of feminism, and giving the impression feminism is supposed to be exercised within total isolation. Not that I wanted pages and pages of protesting and community service, but there weren't any proactive attempts to put all this good femme vibe and diversity to use, no conflict that truly drove Juliet to see outside of herself and of Harlowe.

As this book is set in 2003 and with George W. Bush in the White House (oh boy and we thought those days were bad...) there were a plethora of issues that Juliet, Harlowe, and her crew could have been active in. The insulated privilege of all of them, to sit there, muse, and not have to deal on a day-to-day was fantastical and trivializes the politics of feminism and gives credence to nay-sayers when they claim that feminism is nothing but women barking at men and practicing witchcraft.

Maybe this is the point Rivera is trying to make? That Juliet bares witness to the trivial, armchair politics side of feminism in order to discover a deeper purpose for herself? That this is a jab at what modern third wave feminism has devolved to --- pulpit preachings to the choir, spelunkings in the clit, and the eternal quest for safe spaces? Was this a mockery of that? I'm still on the fence about that considering Rivera is not a satirical writer, and how Harlowe the centerpiece of conflict here, and written to be a literal feminist monster.

Harlowe is the personification of "white women feminism". To show the delights and dangers of female mentorship, and white women's complicity at hijacking a movement for their own personal gains was a bold and necessary assertion. Seeing Juliet attempting to figure out how she fits into terminology that is hijacked by white thought, and her questioning Harlowe all while still idolizing her, was about the realest moments in the book. I was glad that Rivera took it there when it came time to knock Harlowe off her pedestal, showing how ridiculous she was, and take white feminism to task, but sadly, the end result of all this place putting is unsatisfying.

Juliet is way too forgiving of Harlowe, as are Harlowe's rainbow coalition of friends when Harlowe shows her ass in unforgivable ways. After one major blow up, all Harlowe does is shed some tears and sends out limp apology e-mails and she is given a pass by all these women of color who drink her tears and act like they didn't spend an inordinate amount of time in this book grimacing and rolling eyes at Harlowe's dialogues. Juliet, even after fleeing Portland, goes right back to Harlowe in what is quite a counterproductive move. It seemed to me that there was an underlying message here ---- how even when we protest, women of color are still beholden to a white ideal. I can bet this wasn't Rivera's intent --- and there is such a thing as forgiveness --- but the presentation of Harlowe and her treatment of Juliet, and Juliet's reaction after the fact is a weak way of addressing intersectionality and accepting white allies within the sisterhood.

What's also disappointing is Juliet is often told how to be, by everyone around her. Never does she attempt to educate herself or think critically for herself, she just takes everyone's word for it. For all the book's emphasis towards Juliet to discovering her voice and writing it into existence, by book's end I feel she's still waiting to exhale.

Juliet was much more clear-headed and sure of who she was from the start, honestly. There are moments where Juliet also comes across as flat-out ignorant, from making sideways comments about Portland residents hygiene habits to not knowing what a transgender is was....yeah. Look, I'd buy such ignorance if she was living deep in the heart of the Bible Belt, but I have a hard time believing someone from New York City, and the Bronx no less would be as clueless as that. Add in her family having not one but two queer family members seemed another easy way out for Juliet to play dumb. Granted her relationship with her family was another strong portion of this book, especially the tussle between Juliet and her mother over her coming out, but adding in her closeted aunt and queer-friendly cousin defeated the whole trip to Portland or even getting involved with Harlowe in the first place as she had most, if not all, the answers she sought right there within the branches of her family tree.

Discovering yourself is a grand journey in and of itself, a journey that is all about evolving and allowing your true voice to ring out and be heard, even if you're uncertain of where the words, where the path leads you. This message is what Juliet Takes A Breath does magnificently as a whole and for that it's worth the read. Still, with most journeys they are never clear or defined, and more paths need to be taken to allow you to see the bigger picture. So I suggest to read this, take it into consideration, but know that there are better character studies, better feminist paths to sojourn with and expand your own special journey with.

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from the margins 

• Rating: **1/2
• 276 pages
• Published January 18th 2016 by Riverdale Avenue Books

• MIA Characters: So what was Phen, The Nudist supposed to be? Why was he there, and why was he never seen or heard from again? Was he there to fill the Asian and male quota? Did Rivera forget about him in the process of writing? Talk about a pointless character.  

• For all it's telling over showing, there are a lot of quotable lines here. One of my favorites: "Read everything you can push into your skull. Read your mother’s diary. Read Assata. Read everything Gloria Steinem and bell hooks write. Read all of the poems your friends leave in your locker. Read books about your body written by people who have bodies like yours. Read everything that supports your growth as a vibrant, rebel girl human. Read because you’re tired of secrets."

• Gabby Rivera's name may be familiar to those immersed in the comic book culture as she's currently the pen behind the Marvel's America series. She's gotten comic book fanboys in their feelings (cause a secure woman of color is nothing short of kyrptonite to those types) over her blunt observations of an America divided, and with that I'm already intrigued to check it out cause nothing motivates me more than rebel yells against the state of the world, and the tears of bigoted fanboys. Book Riot conducted a great interview with Rivera where she discusses the comic, her creative process, and also why she's got these fanboys upset. Here's a shot of truth serum for ya: "The world in general isn't necessarily the safest place for queer women of color, but it seems that the comic world has got its own challenges. Here’s the thing. It’s less about me having an issue with individual white guys. Will Moss, editor of Marvel, is a white guy. And in fact, I think he did an excellent job of showing how you can utilize your power for good. Instead of him kicking the job [of] America to someone already in the ranks, he did his work, and found me. So there’s that. In a lot of media people of color are demonized and criminalized. We're seen as thieves, or people running and stealing jobs. So I thought it'd be fun to play with the innocence awarded white folks. If these young guys are here in this college, and instead of rallying behind America they see her as an illegal, as a threat, and they use tiki torches, then they're mimicking what is literally happening in our country right now. It's kind of also a little bit of a reflection like, hey, I'm not necessarily twisting your actions or your words, I’m just showing you what it looks like from our perspective. This is what you’re actually doing."