ROSA BY ANY OTHER NAME by Hailey Alcaraz

 

I just can't stop falling in love with everything I read. This story is inspired by Romeo and Juliette if the nurse and Mercutio also fell in love and they were teenagers caught up in the Chicano civil rights movement in Arizona in the 50s. No need to recap the plot, it's a tale as old as time, but with a lovely historical fiction patina. Rosa, or Rosie as she is called at the fancy new school where she passes for white, wants to go to college and be a journalist, hence the passing. Her best friend Ramon, and her school friend Julianne meet and fall in love, which ends tragically. The real power of the book is how Rosa finds her own voice and path in the aftermath. 

The love stories are front and center, but it is the depiction of the fallout that sets this apart. It is a perfectly rendered setting and, while it is certainly heartbreaking, it ends on a note of hope - followed by some commentary by the author. Even though my students don't flock to historical fiction, but pushing the romance aspect (always a popular genre) I bet I could fool them into learning something about history too! God knows, the only history I ever learned in my life was delicately folded into some novel or another...

The only downside to this book was that I kept singing Doug Judy's Rosa song the whole time I was reading it -  small price to pay.