Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education by Jennifer de Leon has been a highly acclaimed book since its publication, even making it to university classrooms. The title “Wise Latinas” comes from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomajor’s words: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
The book consists of a collection of essays, living up to its title, demonstrating how these Latina women go on to college to pursue a higher education. It focuses on Latina women who are writers, such as Sandra Cisneros, Ruth Behar, Norma Cantú, and Joy Castro. The authors of these personal essays are from diverse backgrounds, like Afro-Latinas, Asian-Latinas, and Latinas whose heritage can be from Mexican to Puerto Rican to Columbian.
Despite the focus on Latinas, the collection of essays deals with a wide range of concerns, such as the parental sacrifice for the betterment of their children, isolation, sexuality, racism, alienation, violence, oppression and misogyny. This range of concerns are not exclusive of Latinas, therefore, making it a book where women who do not identify as Latina can still learn, identify, and relate.
One of the common threads in the essays is the sense of losing one’s identity, heritage, language proficiency, or culture upon pursuing a higher education. Many of the narrators expressed a sense of loss and alienation with their family when they entered or applied to college. Another common thread is the failure to meet the expectations of, not only of a woman, but of a Latina woman. Sandra Cisneros beautifully expresses this dilemma on her short essay, “Only Daughter.” She remarks, “…still no husband, my father shakes his head even now and says I wasted all that education.” The fact that she pursued a higher education and did not marry is, for Cisneros’s father, a failure of a Latina Women, which comes from the stereotype (and tradition) of Latina women marrying and prioritizing their marriage before getting an education. Like Cisneros, many of the women in these essays break Latina stereotypes one after the other, demonstrating that a Latina woman can and is more than a stereotype.
The essays also express the control of one’s body and sexuality, specifically in the essays of “My Stalker” and “WhiteGirlColorlessAfriPana” by Lorraine M. Lopez and Gail M. Dottin.
The short personal essays make the book hard to put down once you can’t stop reading and undergoing the Latina Women college experience. As such, the emotional truths of the essays create a broad resonance that is not limited to the Latina experience.