"Becoming Latina in Ten Easy Steps (or "Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps") is a 2006 Chick Lit novel by Lara Rios.
Marcela Alvarez is a twenty-seven-year-old Mexican-American woman who has the dream job of a successful animator for a major Hollywood studio. Despite her grandious lifestyle, she is not a very good Mexican, and is even worse at relationships. Thankfully, she has her uber-Mexican family to guide her, especially her faithful mother and her beloved father, right?
Except not.
At a wedding, someone drops the bomb that Marcela's father is not really her father. Turns out, to her shock, she is the product of an affair her mother had with a white man from her church. What shocks her the most is the accusations from her sisters that the "white blood" in her being the reason for her detachement from her Mexican culture.
Taking this to heart, Marcela sets out to become not only a good Latina, but to become more Latina than her sisters. She enlists the help of her Argentinian co-worker to help her create a list of things she must do to in order to become Latina, which include learning to cook Mexican food, helping at-risk youth, and dating Mexican men. Her hot colleague, George Ramirez, should have fit the bill but is too American for Marcela's liking. However, with her growing attraction towards George, and her finding herself wanting to start a real relationship with him, Marcela must now decide just how important heritage is.
Rios would later re-release the novel in 2013 with different cover art.
In 2006, Rios released a sequel called "Becoming Americana", which is told from the perspective of Lupe, Marcela's mentee.
Tropes include:
- Attempted Rape: Spike tries this on Marcela, but she gets away before he can succeed.
- But Not Too White: Aside from some blue in her eyes, Marcela looks nothing like Paul, and everything like her mother. This comes down on her when she calls the police on her would-be cholo rapist and a delinquent tagging her car, which ends up with the cops racially profiling her and arresting 'her along with the others.
- Clashing Cousins: Marcela and Sonya have a poor relationship for some reason. But while Marcela tries to ignore any confrontation, Sonya goes out of her way to be a bitch to Marcela, somehow making it her business to reveal to the entire family during a wedding that the latter was the product of an extramarital affair.
- Entitled to Have You: Jackson turns down Marcela for a relationship after having sex with her, yet he fumes up and down when she starts dating George, and even attempts to start a violent confrontation with the latter.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Downplayed. Marcela's isn't mistreated by her family even after word gets out that she is the biological daughter of a white American man. She does, however, become the brunt of some insensitive comments from her sisters, who accuse her of not being a "real" Latina because of her mixed blood. It also doesn't help that her aunt Lydia actively cautions her family members from "mixing the blood", often in front of Marcela.
- Heritage Disconnect: The book's plot. Marcela originally didn't think much of her Mexican background until she discovers that she is the product of an affair with a white man. From the point on, she made it her life's mission to out-Mexican her own family. Her co-worker and love interest George Ramirez is a fifth-generation Mexican-American who doesn't speak a lick of Spanish, and couldn't care less about trying to reconnect with his roots.
- Irony: Marcela's mother had carried on an affair with Paul because she thought her husband Jose, who was pretty relaxed, was too controlling. When her pregnancy with Marcela revealed her affair, Jose became a genuine controlling husband, who monitered his wife's every move.
- Latino Is Brown: Strangely, no one bothers to point out that there are white Mexicans, or that many mixed Mexicans have considerable European ancestry. Have the Alvarez family not treated their Mexican culture like a race, Marcela's white "half" side would not have been treated like such a big deal. That being said, Marcela, despite being half-white, has dark skin and her mother's straight black hair, which likely points to the family having higher than average Indigenous ancestry.
- Rape as Backstory: Lupe had been sexually assaulted by her older brother from a young age.
- Soapbox Sadie: Marcela's aunt Lydia is seen this way by the rest of her family because of how active she is in fighting for Chicano and Latinos rights. This is more pronounced when she cautions her brother against philandering with white women, so as to not "taint" the family line with "white blood". This, however, does not diminish her love for niece, Marcela, who is half-white.
- Too Dumb to Live: Sheltered, middle-class Marcela, too put it simply, does zero clue how to navigate the hood, or how to handle those living in it. She tries giving morality lessons to a poverty-stricken teen girl who tagged her car, deliberately goes on a date with a cholo with a criminal record, and repeatedly calls the police despite having experienced racial profiling from them twice.
- Plot-Inciting Infidelity: The revelation of Marcela's mother's affair at a wedding courtesy of Marcela's asshole cousins Sonya is what kicks off the plot.
Tropes exclusive to Becoming Americana:
- Adults Are Useless: Lupe's parents do nothing to discipline their durg dealer son, who also beats and rapes his younger sister. They tolerate his drug dealing because it brings money home, and scold Lupe for standing up for herself from him because he is a man,
- Attempted Rape: Lupe fights off many of these from her older brother, Carlos, and his drug friends.
- Bait-and-Switch: The third chapter starts with Lupe pulling a switchblade on a rough guy while threatening him—until it's revealed that she was only doing a demonstration at an at-risk youth shelter of what is in store for them if they don't turn their lives around.
- Double Standard: Lupe and Carlos' parents never call out the latter for dealing in drugs and bringing in dangerous criminals into the house, potentially bringing harm to the family. However, Lupe going to college instead of bringing money home and defending herself from her bother's beatings instead of taking them somehow invites their wrath.
- Innocently Insensitive: Tracey is so grateful that Lupe had helped her after she was attacked by a purse snatcher, that she relays Lupe's backstory to Will so he can write it in the university's newspaper. Aside from Tracey having released her friend's personal life to the public, Will's article on Lupe reeks of white saviourism, something the latter calls them both out on. Tracey also insists on buying loads of expensive brand-name clothes for Lupe. She does this out of the goodness of her heart, unaware of the In-Universe Unfortunate Implications of her, a white girl, forcing charity on a Latina of colour.
- May–December Romance: Nineteen-year-old Lupe is in love with Nash, who's twenty-seven. While Nash is understandably hesistant to hit on a girl who is in her late teens while he's closer to thirty, Lupe is confused by this logic.
- Parental Substitute: Lupe views Marta, Marcela's mother, as the mom she never had and wishes she could've had. She also views Marcela this way.
- White Man's Burden: Discussed in length. Will and Tracey (who are white) repeatedly bring attention to Lupe's marginalized identities as a poor woman of colour to emphasize the impressiveness of someone like her making it into college. Lupe calls them out for treating her like a "charity case".
- Surprise Pregnancy: Marcela is unhappy with the sudden pregnancy, as she never intended to have children.
