IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

'Once Upon a Quinceañera' is an ode to Latino families —and the drama of telenovelas

Author Monica Gomez-Hira's new novel explores the pull of culture — as well as the sometimes unfair expectations on Latinas as they navigate their teen years.
"Once Upon A Quinceanera" by Monica Gomez-Hira.
"Once Upon A Quinceanera" by Monica Gomez-Hira.HarperTeen

Author Monica Gomez-Hira clearly remembers the moment it hit her — just how much quinceañeras had changed since she was a teen in the early 1990s.

While she often attended the parties celebrating a Latina's 15th birthday — a tradition in Latin American and Caribbean countries — most of her friends' and cousins' parties she attended growing up in suburban New Jersey were relatively small and focused on family and traditional food.

That, she says, began to change in the early 2000s.

“I had never been to such elaborate parties. I'm talking smoke everywhere, and trained dancers and people being wheeled out into the middle of a dance floor in a giant flower that opened to music,” the Colombian American author told NBC News. “I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness.’”

Monica Gomez-Hira.
Monica Gomez-Hira.Courtesy Nicole Lamkin

When Gomez-Hira began seriously focusing on writing fiction, she knew that the social whirl of a quinceañera — and the emotions and stress that come with planning one — would be the perfect setting for a coming-of-age story. The result is her debut novel, “Once Upon a Quinceañera,” which is being released Tuesday by Harper Teen.

The book tells the story of 18-year-old Carmen Aguilar, a kind but somewhat directionless teen from Miami who needs to complete an internship in order to earn the final credits she needs to earn her high school diploma. Desperate to graduate, she reluctantly agrees to intern with an event-planning company for the summer.

Carmen is mortified when she discovers that her internship will not only require her to dress as a fairytale princess at children’s birthday parties, but that she will also be performing at some of Miami’s ritziest quinceañeras as a backup dancer.

Things get even worse when she realizes that she will have to be partnered with her ex-boyfriend Marco throughout — and that one of the quinces they have been hired for is for her cousin Ariana; they're currently estranged from each other. As she prepares for weeks of rehearsals leading up to her cousin’s big day, the extended family begins to wonder if the two will finally reconcile.

The book’s plot then twists and turns as Gomez-Hira hints at the scandalous event that leads to the estrangement between the once-close cousins. “I grew up watching novelas with my family and I just really enjoyed the heightened emotion and the plotting that had everybody connected to everybody else,” she said. “I definitely was trying to echo that.”

Given Gomez-Hira’s fascination with quinceaneras, many readers may be surprised to learn that she never had one of her own. While her parents did ask her if she wanted a party, they did so "in a way that made it very clear that they would prefer that I did not necessarily take them up on it," she recalled. "Also, at the time, I thought I was too cool for that kind of thing."

The youngest of four siblings, the author was the only one in her family who was born in the United States. "There was always a little bit of a tug of war between their expectations of the way they thought I should be, based on the way that my siblings had been raised, and the expectations of being an American teenager and trying to fit in," she said.

She wonders now if having a quinceañera and participating in other cultural milestones would have helped bridge those gaps. "Like a lot of teenagers and young people who are first generation, I definitely went through a long period of feeling, 'Well, how do I negotiate both of these identities?'" she said. "How do I manage to feel fully one thing and also fully the other?'"

The "pull" of traditions — and expectations

Desiring that connection to Latin America is why Gomez-Hira thinks quinceañera culture and the desire to have these celebrations endures among young Latinos, even those whose families have been in the U.S. for decades or generations and who may not be fluent in Spanish.

“You do feel that pull towards your family history and that connection to your family’s story, and you want to feel you're a part of that,” she said. “I don’t think that goes away.”

But with those traditions can sometimes come highly specific and gendered expectations put on teen daughters, in particular. One of the reasons the fictional Carmen in ‘Once Upon a Quinceañera’ bears such resentment toward her cousin’s elaborate party is because her own quinceañera was abruptly canceled after her family members were upset about her behavior at a party.

“With Carmen, there was definitely a sense that she hadn't earned this experience. I thought that was unfair because there was a lot of pressure on her, and she was doing the best she could,” Gomez-Hira said. “I definitely was thinking about how she felt denied of a coming of age, and I wanted her to have the experience of having the coming of age, even if it wasn't in the traditional way.”

Gomez-Hira hopes that Carmen’s story and eventual redemption show teen readers who have stumbled at times or struggled academically that they, too, can turn things around. “Everybody deserves to be the star of their own story,” she said. “Even people who've made mistakes, even people who've taken nontraditional routes in their lives deserve to be proud of themselves.”

Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.