More than one million immigrants come to the United States each year. Half of them, like me, come from Latin America. What unites us is that we all have a dream. Before the end of the school year in my new American school, I thought I wanted to go back home. It was, I would learn, a common wish. But life offers so many surprises, and it’s not always easy to know the best way to make a dream come true. Can your heart and loyalties be in two places? A dream can change.
Camilla del Valle has it all. She lives in a big house in Mexico City and has a lavish lifestyle thanks to her telenovella star mother, Maria Carolina, and her father, a popular voice over actor, but when one of Cammie’s frienemies sells photos of Maria Carolina’s anxiety medication to the tabloids the del Valle family decide to make a big change. Cammie’s mom books a Hollywood television show, in the unglamorous role of a maid, and moves the family to Los Angeles. Cammie struggles to fit in at her posh new private school so when she meets two girls who want to befriend her based on their assumption she is a poor scholarship kid she leans into their stereotypes.
It starts with lies of omissions like confirming her mom is a maid (but leaving out she just plays one on TV) or that her dad is a gardener (a hobby, not his profession) and taking a job tutoring one of the girls in Spanish for extra cash (because who doesn’t want extra cash). But by the end she is accepting expensive presents because her friends feel bad she can’t shop like they can and she feels like it doesn’t matter because they can afford it!
This had a lot of potential to be cutting social commentary but was a bit disappointing. Cammie became more unlikable with each lie she told and by the end I was fed up with her whole schitck. She wants to teach her classmates a lesson in stereotyping but she is fueling those stereotypes with her playacting at being a poor immigrant.