Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood
Publisher
Seal Press
Publication Year
2009
ISBN
9781580052948
Pages
276 pages
Genre
memoir
Format
full length
Item Type
Nonfiction
Annotation
Torn between the high socioeconomic status of her father and the bohemian lifestyle of her mother, Melissa Hart tells a compelling story of contradiction in this coming-of-age memoir. Set in 1970s Southern California, Gringa is the story of a young girl conflicted by two extremes. On the one hand theres life with her mother, who leaves her father to begin a lesbian relationship, taking Hart and her two siblings along. Hart tells of her moms new life in a Hispanic neighborhood of Oxnard, California, and how these new surroundings begin to positively shape Hart herself. At the opposite extreme is her fathers white-bread well-to-do security, which is predictable and stable and boring. Hart is made all the more fraught with frustration when a judge rules that being raised by two women is 'unnatural' and grants her father primary custody.
Grade Level
9-12
Diversity Topics
Culture/Ethnicity; LGBTQ (Gender and Sexuality); Bicultural; Gay/Lesbian; bicultural teenager; bicultural adult; lesbian; lesbian mother
Main Character
female teenager
Race/Ethnicities
Mexican-American / White
Family Formation
divorced mother and father
LGBTQ+
lesbian female
Keywords
Spanish; moving; custody; dating; not fitting in; Hispanic foods; Mexican-American culture
Diversity Impact
direct
STARS Citation
Hart, Melissa, "Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood" (2009). Diverse Families. 1445.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/diversefamilies/1445