Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez
FURIA
Yamile Saied Méndez
Algonquin Young Readers, 2020
ISBN-10 : 1616209917
From the electric orange cover, to the #NiUnaMenos protest with green handkerchiefs, to the cleats hitting the grass, Yamile Saied Méndez gives us the story of Camille Hassan of Rosario, Argentina an intense player of energy, understood strength, and the humble and sturdy eye of a midfield futbolera.
Camille’s team has crowned her LA FURIA for her ferocity and fire that’s taking her team to the finals where US scouts come with college scholarships and a shot at going pro. The biggest dream of Camille Hassan. But at home, Camille places on her “obedient daughter” costume while hiding her hopes from her traditional parents to play soccer as a career. A possibility that Camille already knows her parents will deny.
Méndez gives place to Camille’s complex and fully Latinx ancestry. On page one, we given a genealogy showing us Camille’s Russian great-grandmother, Palestinian grandfather, and an Andalusian grandmother. Early on, we see Camille giving water offerings to La Difunta, a legendary figure who, according to folklore, was a mother who died on a long trip to see her sick husband. Her child along with her, however, stayed alive sustained miraculously by her mother’s breast.
The iconography itself feels resonate to the underlying themes of many young women in Latinx young adult literature to which FURIA is a new companion. History is rich and must be heralded, but the generations of women before who have suffered much—abusive relationships, manipulation, the denial of safety, to no their dreams—cannot be ignored.
In Rosario, Argentina, the community commends the success of young men, and even Camille’s shine and increasing promise is in the shadow of her superstar brother. Her parents’ allegiance to his career success means her hopes already had to be something else without societal pressures. But in Rosario, Argentina a woman’s survival is first priority. Nationwide, young women are disappearing, found murdered, and worse.
So why read Latinx YA? Because it’s the youth who are bringing the resistance. It is the youth of the generation who are standing up to say not one more.
For some, it’s National Book Award winning POET X’s Xiomara Baptista who finds her voice through poetry, for Julia Reyes in the National Book Award finalist I’M NOT YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN DAUGHTER, it’s writing. For Camille Hassan in FURIA, resistance plays in the space where young women often have the least autonomy—the body.
For Camille, it’s her body, her history, and her spirit that propels her through a cultural shift on and off the soccer field. FURIA asks of Camille what success asks of Latinx young women every day. How can you navigate the pressures and expectations of family, society, love, survival, and how can you have the strength to take your shot?
For many of us, it too is through FURIA herself. The fury, the grit, the body, the protest, and this is what Méndez gives the reader. A place to see our fire released on the page and to finally watch her fly.
ARI TISON’s forthcoming YA novel Saints of the Household (FSG/Macmillan) is set for publication in 2023. She is the winner of the 2018 Vaunda Micheaux Nelson Award, and her poems and short works have been published in Yellow Medicine Review, the Under Review, and Rock & Sling. She is the broadside editor for Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop in collaboration with the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts. Tison teaches creative writing at the Loft Literary Center and North Central University and lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with her husband.