Meg Medina Quotes & Sayings

It was Ma who first noticed my body changing, but she wasn't exactly tactful about my getting cuerpo. "Put on a bra already, Piddy," she said after she noticed a man on the bus gawking at my chest one day. "You can't go around with two loose onions in your shirt for all the boys to stare at," she snapped, like it was my fault that the man had helped himself to the show. — Meg Medina

Nobody is in the school yard when I get there, except for a few guys hanging near the fence. I recognize a couple of them from the forbidden Latin lunch table. I walk fast, trying not to be noticed, but, of course, they have to go out of their way to call me out. "Move that junk, mami!" one of them calls, making squeezing motions with his hands. I don't turn around to give him the finger, though I probably should. Instead, I hurry up the steps two at a time. — Meg Medina

Sometimes it's hard to wait for good things to happen. - Tia Isa — Meg Medina

Papi chose to be invisible today so you won't ever have to be. — Meg Medina

I grip my charm tighter. All I can think about is Yaqui Delgado's eyes, about what kind of cloak she wears, what kind of dagger she'll run through me. — Meg Medina

The whole building was probably listening in on her escandalo through the pipes; maybe even the whole block could hear. That tells you how mad she was, because if there's one thing Ma hates, it's looking low. The worst thing you can be is a chusma. She thinks we get a bad rap as Latinos, which she's always trying to undo by being extra quiet and polite all the time. — Meg Medina

Take care not to listen to anyone who tells you what you can and can't be in life. — Meg Medina

I can't get Yaqui Delgado out of my mind. Plenty of girls shake their junk. How is that enough to make somebody hate you? It's crazy. — Meg Medina

Growing up is like walking through glass doors that only open one way
you can see where you came from but can't go back. — Meg Medina

When I write now, I pretend I'm holding hands with the old me. I try to make sense of all those questions for her ... — Meg Medina

When I look up, I'm surprised to find myself in front of the old building. My feet must have gone on autopilot. I'm like one of those African elephants that finds her way home, no matter how far she's roamed. — Meg Medina

The camera does a close-up on the girl who can miraculously see again. It cuts to the mother-in-law, then to the clueless husband. All at once, the credits run.
"Maldito sea!" Lila shoves the coffee table with her foot. "We have to wait to see that hussy get what's coming?"
"Please. You know what's coming." I rub perfume on my wrists and sniff. It's better than sour milk, and it reminds me of fancy department stores where I can only browse. I stuff a few samples in my pocket. "It's going to end the way all the novelas end. Everybody happy."
She shoos away my idea like it's a bad smell. "So what? Nobody gets happy the same way. That's what's interesting. — Meg Medina

SKANK is scribbled in ballpoint pen on my desk. I don't exactly know why my heart starts to thump. It's not like there aren't messages and other handiwork all over this school. Take auditorium seat J-8. I found out during last week's Expectations of Excellence assembly that it's got a faded image of a penis carved on the armrest. No one likes to sit in the Pecker Chair for an assembly. People make fun of you the whole day after that. Ask Rob. — Meg Medina

Son unas cualquieras, she mutters. Nobodies. No culture, no family life, illiterates, she means. The kind of people who make her cross to the other side of the street if she meets them in the dark on payday. They're her worst nightmare of what a Latin girl can become in the United States. Their big hoop earrings and plucked eyebrows, their dark lips painted like those stars in the old black-and-white movies, their tight T-shirts that show too much curve and invite boys' touches. — Meg Medina

Yeah, sure. That's what you think." She sounds a little sad when she says it. A boy hasn't looked Mitzi in the eyes for years. Their eyes stayed glued to her chest. "I'll be her boyfriend noticed you or something like that. But if that's what happened, you're done. — Meg Medina

You never forget the books you loved as a kid. You never forget the poems you memorized, the first book you read until the cover fell off, the book you read hidden from your mother. What an honor to hold hands with a child's imagination in this way. — Meg Medina

Estas hecha una mujer." She shakes her head sadily. A lot of the salon women tell me this: "You've become a woman." None of them ever sounds too happy about it. — Meg Medina

How can you say bad things about someone you don't know?" I shout. "How can you hate a stranger? Why do you have to pick on people?" she's not better than Yaqui. It's like everywhere there's a bully in my face. — Meg Medina

You know where this Yaqui girl is going to be in a few years if she doesn't change? She'll still be there, same as always in her old neighborhood
a nobody with nothing. And guess what? That's her worst fear. — Meg Medina