Memoir of the author's life growing up as an overachiever in an underpriviledged family, chronicling the blessed relationship she forged with her mother after her father deserted the family.
Fresh from the spotlight of their first television experience, the Amigas Inc. team is back, but the heat is always on in Miami and when they get hired to do an unusual quince for a bratty debutante, the temperature goes sky high.
Carmen is turning fifteen and her friends Sarita, Alicia, Jamie, and Gaz plan to throw her a quinceanera, but when the group decides to join a reality show competition, Carmen feels like her party is becoming less important.
Separated from her best friend in Brooklyn, thirteen-year-old Marisol spends a year with her grandmother in Panama where she secretly searches for her real father.
Eagerly anticipating her Quincea?era, the fifteenth birthday celebration that will signify her adulthood, Marisol is troubled by a lack of money, her mother's new boyfriend, changes in her best friend, and the absence of the father she never knew.
Recounts the vibrant personalities and remarkable cultural movements that flourished in America's leading African-American community during the 1920s and 1930s.
