Like most teenagers, she is self-conscious about her looks and dismays over her curly hair, which won’t seem to straighten no matter what she tries.įrom the beginning, Manzano infuses Spanish words into the English text such as mija, my daughter, and la marqueta, the market. She refuses to be called by her real name, Rosa, because she says it is too “Puerto Rican,” and her neighborhood doesn’t need another girl named Rosa.
She secretly criticizes the way her mother covers all their furniture in plastic and decorates with fake flowers. Evelyn seems to be annoyed with everything around her. The novel starts with a debate between mother and daughter in the kitchen of their home. Her childhood experience visiting her grandmother in Spanish Harlem served as the inspiration for the novel, which is based off of real-life events from the 1960s. Author Manzano is best known for her role as Maria on Sesame Street, and has been influential in the lives of young adults and children for decades.
It follows fourteen-year old Evelyn as she navigates her turbulent teenage years alongside a spur of activism in her neighborhood by the Young Lords group. The 2012 novel is set in 1969 in the El Barrio neighborhood of Harlem. The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano is a coming-of-age, young adult novel by author Sonia Manzano.
