"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.
