On the subject of books I read for school, I had to read this one for Spanish class (in Spanish), and it was definitely my least favorite book I’ve had to read for school this year.
The Color of My Words tells the story of Ana Rosa, an 11 or 12 year old girl in the Dominican Republic soon after Trujillo’s dictatorship who dreams of being an author. However, due to the lingering political turmoils, it isn’t safe to write. Thought the book, Ana Rosa tries to find her place in her family, her voice, and learn how to be heard through her writing.
While that is what is advertised of this book, it honestly isn’t what it is about. It really is just following Ana Rosa through her life and a few things that happened to her. While some chapters mention her dreams of writing, and how she shouldn’t write, most of them just feel a little irrelevant. The first chapter felt like a reasonable first chapter, providing an introduction to the characters and Ana Rosa’s problems. However, the 2nd through the 6th chapter all just felt like more exposition, and the book only has 8 chapters. While the last two chapters felt more relevant, by that point I honestly just didn’t care about Ana Rosa and if I could have not finished this, I would have. I do think it is important to have some exposition, having so many chapters that seemed so irrelevant to what we were told the book was going to be about was honestly just really annoying and made it kind of boring.