Fat Chance, Charlie Vega Review

 I first learned about Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado while browsing a publishing catalog. I had gotten into the habit of looking at these to not miss authors who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. My habit served me well because here was a book with a Puerto Rican main character hidden in the depths of a catalog. I rarely see my ethnicity represented in YA, and needless to say I counted the days until Fat Chance, Charlie Vega’s release day.   

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega follows the titular character Charlie, an aspiring teenage writer, as she navigates first love, self-acceptance, and friendship. In an interview with The Nerd Daily author Crystal Maldonado states the novel is about “[t]he five Fs…: fat fashion, feelings, friendship, and first love! At its core, I think this book is really about love in general — the kind you have for your friends, the kind that gives you butterflies in your stomach, and the kind you give to yourself” (Koehler, “Q&A: Crystal Maldonado, Author of ‘Fat Chance, Charlie Vega’”). This book celebrates love, and we accompany Charlie as she learns the importance of each iteration of it. 

Exploring different types of love Fat Chance, Charlie Vega delves into complex familial relationships. For instance, Charlie and her mother (Jeanne Vega) often disagree about Charlie’s weight. Mrs. Vega was once fat, but after a family loss she lost all the weight and thus insists Charlie does the same. Charlie, however, wants to accept her body as it is. The mother/daughter relationship in the novel dramatizes how the pressure for body conformity does not only comes from culture at large but also from within our own family. Charlie’s relationship with her mother changes for the better over the course of the novel, stressing how familial tensions like these are not resolved overnight – if ever. Charlie recognizes that she cannot change her mother, and that most of the change must come from within herself. Fatphobia exists everywhere in our society, and Fat Chance, Charlie Vega depicts that it can come from those who we are meant to love deeply, our family. 

Two of the other main types of love explored are friendships and romantic love. Charlie and her best friend Amelia have been inseparable since they were little. However, as they grow older, Charlie starts noticing how everyone prefers Amelia over her, this occurs when it comes to other friendships and romantic relationships. Through their relationship Maldonado illustrates how easy it is to put one’s self down by constantly comparing ourselves to our friends or peers. I thought this topic was handled well and it showed how fine the line is between admiration and comparison. The novel depicted the importance of recognizing how careful we must be when loving our friends because putting them on a pedestal could lead to resentment. Furthermore, the novel also explores first love. Charlie has never been kissed and daydreams about finding someone who will love her as she is. As an aspiring Romance writer, she wants to experience it for herself. Once she does, she finds herself consumed by her romantic relationship. I found the relationship between Charlie and the romantic lead sweet and well developed. We see Charlie realize who she is within the context of the relationship and how her self-love does not need to come from her partner’s validation. 

The most celebrated form of love in Fat Chance, Charlie Vega is self-love. Charlie’s journey is about accepting herself and her body. This develops throughout the novel as she navigates different types of relationships such as the one with her mother, best friend, and boyfriend. Ultimately, she discovers that her love for herself should not be rooted in these, instead it must come from within. I was glad to see how Charlie slowly came to this realization. She is not a character who is completely self-deprecating since she displays confidence when it comes to her writing skills. 

However, she struggles to see the beauty in herself because everything around her tells her she’s anything but beautiful. Charlie feels the need to embody perfection in order to be worthy of love. Her best friend Amelia gives her some advice when it comes to this by saying, “You need to believe in your value for you, even if you’re not some flawless ethereal being…We’re all messy, Charlie” (316). This encapsulates Charlie’s journey to self-love the realization that no one is perfect, and that value comes from the self not external sources. 

When starting Fat Chance, Charlie Vega I had no particular expectation as to how I wanted to see my culture portrayed. I felt excitement over a character who shared my cultural identity. However, the representation of Puerto Rican culture delighted me. There was mention of my favorite foods like tostones (twice fried plantains). Yet, what I really loved was how Maldonado approached the topic of Spanish and Puerto Rican culture. Charlie is half Puerto Rican and half white, but mainly takes after her Puerto Rican side. There is some discussion as to how Charlie feels inadequate when it comes to her father’s side of the family because she doesn’t speak Spanish. I thought that this was a great point by the author and one that is important to make. I have heard my own family members voice their concerns about Puerto Rican children who do not speak Spanish. To me this is not something that separates you from your heritage and I’m glad that Charlie realizes this as well. Maldonado depicts the Puerto Rican experience not as a monolith, but as one that is unique to the person. This is such a powerful message that resonated with me and I believe I won't be alone in this. I appreciated how Charlie’s cultural identity wasn’t just about food or any other practices, instead it was weaved with her journey of self-acceptance and provided a powerful message for the Puerto Rican audience living in the US. 

Another aspect of the novel that I really enjoyed was the inclusion of fashion and development of style. I love reading fashion descriptions in books and seeing how the author depicts outfits. In the novel we see how Charlie tries to pinpoint her style by frequenting #fatfashion on Instagram and how seeing other people like her inspired her to find her own sense of style. I enjoyed how Maldonado included critique of fashion stores, which often do not carry clothing that would be suitable for a teenager. Instead, these retailers sell matronly looking clothing. The reader can get a glimpse of Charlie’s style in the cover and in other instances of the novel. As someone who is straight-sized this was not something I considered, but I’m glad it was part of Charlie’s journey. 

Author, Crystal Maldonado, explores the five F’s (fat fashion, feelings, friendship, and first love) through all the themes I mentioned and does so with a character that we can’t help but root for. Fat Chance, Charlie Vega is a story of different kinds of love and how they all play a part in the formation of the self. Charlie is a magnificent character who drives this story and helps readers realize that we should embrace all aspects of ourselves. It also can help the reader see how fatphobia is embedded in our culture and how some of the things we say can be harmful to those we love. With a diverse cast of characters and an extremely lovable main character, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega will take readers on a journey of love and self-acceptance. 

Sources:

Koehler, Mimi. “Q&A: Crystal Maldonado, Author of ‘Fat Chance, Charlie Vega.’” The Nerd Daily. February 1, 2021. www.thenerddaily.com/crystal-maldonado-author-interview/

Maldonado, Crystal. Fat Chance, Charlie Vega. Holiday House, 2021.

-NA

To All the Books I’ve Loved Before

I’ve been thinking a lot about the end recently.

The end of the semester, to clarify. I bring this up because it will also be the end of my graduate career (assuming I pass my portfolio defense – more on that later!). As I reflect on what it means to be awarded an M.A. degree, I ponder if my relationship with literature has changed. Do I put literature on a higher pedestal now? Have my “immature” interests matured? Has studying children’s and young adult literature led me to love it more or hate the flaws I’ve come to notice?

Which brings me to this blog post. Its title is a reference to the movie, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, whose teen romance genre reminds me of what drew me to the very first book I wrote a blog post about: I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn. I realized only in hindsight that what makes this novel one of my favorites is that despite all of the books I’ve read throughout the years that featured romance in any way, it was the first in which I actually found the love interest attractive. In fact, it was the first I had read in which there was an Asian male love interest.

There exist many novels in which young Asian American girls fall in love, but predictably, their love interests are often white (or unidentified, and therefore white by default in the popular imagination). The movie alluded to in this blog post’s title is one example, alongside Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman, Butterfly Yellow by Thanhha Lai, Fake it Till You Break It by Jenn. P Nguyen, I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo, and many others. It is much more likely to see an Asian American teenage girl fall in love with a white character than another Asian American or someone of another ethnicity, which perpetuates the stereotype of the submissive Oriental. What about the Asian American boys?

One reason that Asian American young men are not depicted as love interests might be the Asian American literary trope that Asian men are frequently depicted as effeminate or having the characteristics of a woman. Reclaiming Asian masculinity from this disparaging association that erases their distinctiveness is vital, and there is some progress within Asian American young adult literature. Young Asian American men are occasionally depicted as attractive, such as in I’ll Be the One by Lyla Lee wherein the love interest is a famous model. Novels such as this and I Love You So Mochi disrupt the notion that only white boys are of interest and instead provide much-needed representation.

Yet we run into another problem when Asian American teens fall in love with one another and date in YA literature. A surprising pattern emerges: the relationships very often hinge on secrecy, lies, and/or defying parental expectations. Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao and Frankly in Love by David Yoon are several examples in which relationships are faked for parental approval. Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo chronicles a relationship that develops over a day of lies about professional work, and Romeo and Juliet gets a contemporary, Vietnamese American spin in Loan Le’s A Phở Love Story. When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon and A Taste for Love by Jennifer Yen feature parents who select dating partners for their children. Just a cursory glance at texts that feature young Asian American protagonists shows that romance is nearly always entangled with deception and parental involvement.

Despite this, these novels are engaging. Their protagonists grapple with parental expectations out of love for these family members, and the casual depiction of cultural markers is comforting. Rather than repackage tropes, these novels integrate Asian American experience with the familiarity of teenage romance. New characterizations fit in smoothly with canonical ones: respectfully reserved, shy young men, abrasively opinionated, good-hearted young women, physically attractive boys, and intellectually impressive girls claim their spaces in the pages. This genre will continue to expand, and with it, the conceptualization of what it looks like to be Asian American and in love will continue to grow. Asian American YA romance has much potential to delineate the “heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity” of Asian American culture advocated for by Lisa Lowe (66). 

Having explored the genre of Asian American young adult romance that was so special to me before this M.A. program because of how rarely I encountered it, I return to my question: do I love it more or do I hate the flaws I’ve come to see? My answer is that I still love it. Though I was initially dismissive of the importance of representation as I entered graduate studies, choosing Asian American children’s literature as my specialization has led to representation becoming more meaningful to me than before I had embarked on this exploratory journey. I’ve read and appreciated Asian American YA literature in the past, but this graduate assistantship has allowed me to validate it to myself and spotlight it for others to appreciate. What I’ve learned throughout my time as a blogger of children’s literature academia is that it is worth it to critically examine what captivates us. We’ll emerge with a more robust, complex understanding of all the books we’ve loved before.

-       (A.N.)

*Special thanks to Magical Reads Blog, which has a lengthy list of YA romances with Asian Characters. Definitely worth taking a look at!

https://magicalreads7.wordpress.com/2020/05/14/list-ya-romances-with-asian-characters/

 

Scholarly Works Referenced

Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Duke University Press, 1996.