"The Making of Yolanda La Bruja" is a 2023 teen fiction fantasy novel by Lorraine Avila.
The book's protagonist, Yolanda Nuelis Alvarez, is a Dominican American girl from the Bronx who is on the verge of being initiated as a bruja (witch) as per family tradition. With guidance from her grandmother, Mama Tete, she learns how to read a pack of Tarot cards that have been passed down for centuries. Meanwhile, she attends her racially diverse high school, Julia De Burgos High School with her best friend, Victory, and her maybe-maybe-not boyfriend, Jose.
One day, the school receives a new student: a white boy named Ben, who happens to be the son of an aspiring politician. Yolanda's cards (and visions) tell her that Ben poses a danger to the school, and everything it stands for. Now it is up to her and her friends to find a way to keep their majority Black and Brown school safe.
Book contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Ben's father is one of these, as he has had his cuticals ripped off at some point.
- Affectionate Nickname: Yolanda is referred to as Yoyo by Victory and Mr.L.
- Ambiguous Gender: One of Yolanda's classmates, Jay, goes by they/them pronouns though it is never explicitly stated if they are non-binary. Same goes for her therapist, who also goes by gender neutral pronouns.
- Ambiguous Situation: Are Yolanda and Jose a thing? No one knows. Yolanda herself has no idea.
- But Not Too Black:
- Yolanda notes how most telenovelas feature white Latinos, while Black and Indigenous ones are only featured as the help.
- Yolanda's mother, Yonis, makes a few anti-Black comments to her children. She nicknames her daughter "Morena" as a way of downplaying her Blackness. She also laments how Yolanda inherited her father's kinkier hair texture and darker skin, and expresses relief that her sons got her wavier texture instead. Her husband calls her out on this.
- Defied by Victory. Although she's Dominican American like Yolanda, her activist parents remind her that she is African above all else. They had taught her to be proud of her dark skin (they call her "Negra" affectionately), her hair, and the religious and spiritual practices of her enslaved ancestors. Although the family knows Spanish well enough, they don't try pressing it on Victory since it is a colonizer language.
- But Not Too White: The other students consider the only other white student, Amina, to be this because her parents are Armenian immigrants who, despite having white privilege, gets the occasional mistreatment from White Americans (Anglos). She also makes it a point to use her proximity to whiteness to call out any problematic behaviors against her fellow Black and Brown classmates.
- Chick Magnet: The students at Julia De Burgos swoon over Ben on his first day.
- Cool Teacher: Mr.L is beloved by all his students for his friendly, charming demeanor, and his devotion to social justice. He also serves a mentor and confidant of sorts to Yolanda, as she turns to him about her clairvoyant abilities, and her visions of Ben shooting up the school, which he immediately believes. When he is later shot dead by Ben, the entire school mourns him greatly.
- Disappeared Dad: Yolanda's father has been in prison for most of her life, and is only now scheduled to be released, much to her delight.
- Double Standard: While watching Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with Victory, Yolanda points out how brujería is deemed acceptable when practiced by a white girl in fiction, but is demonized when practiced by Black girls as a spiritual tradition.
- Foreshadowing: In Mr.Ruiz's class, they discuss a book where the Black heroine neglects to save a little white boy from a house fire that he had started to spite his abusive father. Yolanda and the class agree with the heroine's stance based on the boy's actions, while Ben believes that the father's abuse justified the boy's crime. Guess what Ben does later.
- Freudian Excuse: Ben's father (a Democratic politician) abuses him. He rebels by taking up alt-right, white supremacist views contrary to his father's progressive left-wing views. Of course, Yolanda and friends point out that Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse.
- Hypocrite: Ben's father is a progressive politician who decides to send his son to a majority-minority public school as his way of showing how 'progressive' he is. When Ben is later threatened with suspension for throwing racial slurs at two Black students, the father tries bribing the principal to excuse him from punishment. Key word, tries.
- Innocently Insensitive: Ben frequently makes bigoted comments, and downplays them by justifying that he is not used to the new school environment. Averted, of course, as he means everything he says given his hatred towards the POC students.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Ben believes that Black and Brown people are ruining American, and wonders why his father is not doing anything to get rid of them. It's also revealed that the reason for his expulsion from his previous schools was for various racist actions, such as using chopsticks to injure an Asian student, and hanging an effigy of a Black student on a noose.
- Ripped from the Headlines: There are a few indirect mentions of the countless shootings that have happened in schools in the U.S. Yolanda mentions a mass shooter who had left behind an anti-immigrant manifesto, likely a reference to the 2019 El Paso shooting
. - Sacrificial Lion: Mr.L is the only fatality in Ben's shooting rampage.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Candidate Hill brings up the donations he had been giving to the school to keep Ben from being suspended for making racist comments to Yolanda and José that resulted in a fight. The principal not only rejects this, but also lists off all the racist incidents that Ben had instigated at his previous schools from where he had been expelled. She warns Mr.Hill that Ben will be expelled from Julia De Burgos if he repeats this.
- Token White: Unusually for this trope, this is Played for Drama. Ben is not the only white student in the school, as they also have Amina (though her whiteness is questioned for reasons stated under But Not Too White). However, the fact that he is the son of a politician, comes from immense wealth, and displays problematic behaviors really makes him stand out.
- Twofer Token Minority: Yolanda ticks off five of these: She's a queer Black Latina who is deaf (the cover shows her wearing ocular implants). And she's a witch.
- Villainous Crush: One generous interpretation of Ben's obsession with Yolanda. He interacts with her more than with the other students (he does hang out with other students only because they invite him out as opposed to him seeking them out), going as far as to invite her to his place to (supposedly) help him study. He also has little issue showing his softer side around her when he kisses a cat at a bodega.
