FUNERAL FOR FLACA

A collection of essays that walks readers through different phases of one woman’s life.

This compilation ranges from Prado’s earliest memory of her father’s absence from a kindergarten show and tell to her present struggles with bipolar disorder and PTSD and with offering forgiveness. Her carefully crafted essays are all intensely felt. She starts off strongly by detailing her experiences as a brown kid in Belmont, California, who spoke Spanish at home; she points out how she struggled with her identity at a primarily White school. Prado guides readers through the trying events of her childhood, as when her dad left the family and she almost failed out of middle school. She hastily moves on to her emotional breakdown right before her college graduation and then recounts serious romantic relationships and how they fell apart, as well as experiences of sexual assault. In the midst of her storytelling, Prado challenges readers to reconsider their definition of storytelling, as she says that she can’t always trust her own memories. However, the way that she mixes in contemporary letters and diary entries makes her experiences feel tangible and gives them additional credibility. She also incorporates family and school photographs as well as her heartfelt sentiments in a eulogy for her aunt Concha. Prado’s intentional ordering of her essays effectively brings “quiero bailar” together with the essays that surround it. At first glance, it would appear to be disconnected, as it’s about gentrification in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant and feels less personal and more critical; however, it makes sense when one considers the essays before and after—in which Prado discovers that she’s 60% European and considers letting go of her family nickname—as they share the concept of needing to “exist loudly” in order to “never be forgotten.”

A difficult but heartwarming set of essays that relate a story of healing.