If Mexican High were being written today, this news story would make a great case for Maggie, Mila’s foreign service officer mother.

The Seattle Times included Mexican High in a round-up review:

“Mexican High” by Liza Monroy (Spiegel & Grau, $21.95, 334 pages): Seattle-born Liza Monroy, who now lives in New York, attended high school in Mexico City and is the daughter of a State Department Foreign Service officer — just like the protagonist of this coming-of-age novel about a high-school senior whose mother’s job makes the two of them relocate south of the border.

Initially despondent about leaving her U.S. high school and learning a whole new world, protagonist Mila sets out to negotiate a thicket of cultural differences, a new language, easy drugs and alcohol, and a class system in which children of privilege are escorted by drivers and bodyguards while the parents swan off to the next spa appointment. By turns tough and vulnerable, Mila also is searching for her Mexican father, whom her mother has never identified (he’s a socially prominent married man with whom Mom had a brief fling).

Monroy renders Mexico City in all its contradictory aspects — poverty, beauty, danger, pollution, opportunity — and makes Mila’s struggle to find herself very real. The title, which suggests south-of-the-border hallucinogens, doesn’t really suggest the complexity and honesty of this excellent debut novel.

The novel was also recently blogged as a “cool book for teens”

I loved this thoughtful article by Margo Rabb about YA vs. “adult” fiction in the Book Review this past weekend. During the writing of Mexican High, once in a while I wondered, if this story were to be published, would it be a young adult novel or adult fiction with a teenage narrator? In the end it was officially put out into the world as adult (I didn’t weigh in on the matter, as I was open to either), as things do tend toward the X-rated on occasion.

I never thought the category mattered as much. As Margo Rabb points out in her essay, there is nothing shameful about publishing a “serious literary work” book as YA. When I think back on my teenage years and all the young adult books I tore through, I realize how much they shaped my love of reading and writing. In YA vs. adult literary debate, it seems important to remember that many teens have the intellectual faculties — if not the rationality — of adults.

I’m back from the book tour, which brought me to three amazing independent bookstores: Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, MA (right near Boston, more city than suburb), UrbanThink in Orlando, and Books & Books, Coral Gables.

I’ve learned that at nearly every reading, there will be some kind of heckler during the Q&A portion, or at least someone whose mission is to challenge, ask oddball questions, or start discussion about a book — someone else’s. And every time, it provokes even more questions, even if only to divert from whatever topic the heckler wants to engage. I like those eccentric types a lot as things always get lively and/or humorous once they chime in.

In Boston, I saw friends I’d made at Emerson College, one or two of whom I hadn’t seen since then, and spent a day reworking the framework of the memoir I’m writing now. While I was traveling, it suddenly started to feel like a very different project — as though what I’d been working on was just a piece of the puzzle, not the entire puzzle. The inertia of travel does that to me it seems. So does the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, where I was a resident last summer, and spent a few more hours writing one afternoon. The current writer-in-residence, Justin Quarry, I found to be both an extremely kind, cool person, and also a talented writer — look for his upcoming story in TriQuarterly! I read it on the plane home from Miami. It is amazing; I’ll leave it at that…

UrbanThink is one of my favorite bookstores. Jim, the owner, is also a writer, and has great taste in books. The setup, sitting on a stool with a mic, was one of my favorites as it created a nice sense of intimacy with the audience. Or maybe that was just the result of most of them being the great folks I got to know last summer. Either way, it was a blast because of the good energy in the room. Different bookstores set different tones and moods. Orlando’s was definitely festive.

In Coral Gables, I met members of my family I hadn’t seen in years — and some I’d never met before at all! I wondered if anyone would show up to a Saturday evening reading during the summer, but thanks to them, as well as some nice people who weren’t related, there was a decent turnout. Three really cool girls who’d lived in Mexico. A guy from Colombia raised in Detroit. A middle-aged couple. A former English teacher who said she once went to a Saturday reading where she was the sole audience member. A few teenagers. Some people in the back who I think left halfway through.

For my last day, I moved into the Biltmore Hotel, which claims to have the largest swimming pool in the country and used to be a hospital for injured soldiers during World War II. My great-uncle, who still lives in the area, worked there. Went to South Beach, went swimming, flew home.

So overall, the tour was a lot of fun, and while it’s nice to sleep in my own bed, I only wished there were more stops! I am working on the West Coast, my official “home” in the States. We’ll see…