Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles, and other Quinceanera Stories

349 Pages·2007·1.7 MB·English

by  Adriana Lopez

Fifteen Candles

15 Tales of Taffeta
,
Hairspray, Drunk Uncles
,
and other

Quinceañera Stori
es

an anthology edited by
L
Adriana opez
F
or my mother and her fortitude,
when it seemed everyone
in my peer group
was considering a jump off a bridge . . .
Table of Contents

vii AN INTRODUCTION
The Romantics
3 29 51

Alberto Rosas Angie Cruz Constanza Jaramillo-Cathcart
el quınceañero love rehearsals fıfteen and
the mafıa
Qu eens for a Day
71 92 106
Fabiola Santiago Leila Cobo-Hanlon Nanette Guadiano-Campos
the year of ıt all started uprooted
dreamıng: a tale wıth the dress
of two
quınceañeras
The Party Crashers
131 151 175

Malín Alegría-Ramírez Adelina Anthony Eric Taylor-Aragón
quınce crashers la mamasota barefoot
Reluctant Damas & Chambelanes

203 222 239
Barbara Ferrer Michael Jaime Becerra Monica Palacios
no quınces, the perpetual the dress was way
thanks. chambelán too ıtchy
The Dreamers
267 288 308
Felicia Luna Lemus Berta Platas Erasmo Guerra
quınce never was a blue denım recuerdo:
quınce my sıster
remembered
327
CONTRIBUTORS
333
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
COVER
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
An Introduction

I can’t remember my fifteenth birthday. I was probably punished
as usual, locked up in my Laura Ashley–wallpapered room, sob-
bing to my Culture Club poster, asking: “Why me? Why? ” Life ’s
emotional arc seemed so extreme back then. Like a poorly devel-
oped plot to an MTV music video or an after-school special whose
storyline was equally as calamitous as my own life ’s.
It ’s all a lot of information to take in for a new adult brain.
Circa XV, you’re basically a fully formed person conscious of
your surroundings. A bit precocious? Yes. Strange? Absolutely.
But nonetheless, you still have a pretty clean slate to be proud of.
You’re ripe with ideas about the world and you’re at your physical
prime. Yet despite these attributes, you’re absolutely helpless, use-
less, for two fundamental reasons: 1) your flaming hormones
won’t let you think straight, and 2) you’re still a citizen of the re-
public of the family home. You’re basically stuck giving in or de-
fecting.
On the edge of adulthood, turning fifteen can pose many exis-
tential questions about your future role in society. Especially when
the deep-seeded symbolism of the quinceañera ritual is involved.
This ultimate coming-out party for Latinas in the States and in
Latin America has always, and will always remain, a rite of pas-
sage to cherish forever or relive in therapy first, and eventually
grow from (most of this collection’s contributors belong to the
latter group).
This ostentatious girl-to-woman transformation tradition has
vii AnI ntroduction
been hard to shake for Latinos since its rougher beginnings in
Aztec culture, where fifteen-year-old girls were feted for being
ready for marriage and procreation, and boys for war. After Eu-
rope spread its influence over the Americas, quinceañera parties
for upper-crust debutantes had more of a cotillion bent to them.
This formal introduction of rosy-cheeked girls to society included
the not-so-Latin-American waltz and usually came with a crown,
a fancy gown, and fifteen dancing couples.
In the last decades, having a quinceañera party has gone in and
out of fashion like any gyrating teen heartthrob of the day. But in
the last few years, cities all across the United States have witnessed
quite the quinces comeback. Call it a case of major Latin pride, or
Bat Mitzvah and Sweet Sixteen envy, but flocks of Latinos are res-
urrecting this ritual to all-new millennium heights with ceremo-
nies as opulent as a Dynasty wedding. Pyrotechnics aside, we ’re
still a traditional people and most of the quinceañeras’ earmarked
traditions still linger, albeit with new twists for our multiculti
times. Some families still opt for modest backyard parties, some
do it up in big catering hall parties, some rent out Disney World,
and some prefer a reflective religious ceremony. But all include
the girl, her family and friends, the big expectations, the nerves,
and eventually the messy mush of memories.
It doesn’t matter whether you were the only Latino family
in town or if your neighborhood grocery had a fully stocked
Goya foods section, if you lived in the States, a quinceañera party
affirmed your Latinoness. And at fifteen, many writers from
this collection weren’t sure about this multigenerational-Latino-
Catholic-formal-dance-party-with-free-alcohol thingamajig. It
could be kind of surreal for the average young Latino. Maybe
you’d been to a wedding or two in your youth, but this was about
celebrating a peer’s initiation into the trappings of adulthood. No
groom in sight, just God. “I mean, gosh!” the average preteen
An Introduction viii
might ponder, “there’s this holy reception first, then we’re at this huge
party, she’s suddenly wearing makeup and jewelry, she’s waltzing, she’s
followed around by girls in matching dresses and dudes in tuxes, her
father dances with her and then encourages her to dance with other
guys, and she’s trading in her flat slippers for sexy heels?!”
Whether you’re related to the quinceañera, dating her, in love
with her mother, a friend of a friend of hers, or just there for the
free food, you’re still at this function asking yourself questions
about where you fit into this spectacle. Under the heel-beaten
floorboards of this seemingly harmless fiesta lie bigger, thornier
issues for the preteen Latino to consider: the curiosities of cultural
traditions, recurring acne, the church, appropriate dancing tech-
niques, peculiar relatives, covert drinking, unflattering formal at-
tire, the opposite sex, the stereotypes and mandates of your own
sex and, most importantly, whether this means you’re now allowed
to have sex.
In my search for fifteen writers with a personal story to tell
about a quinceañera event in their lives, I found the majority of
tales fell into five types of categories: the writer who had a party,
the writer who was forced to have a party, the writer who dreamed
about a party, the writer who was serendipitously invited to or
crashed a party, and the writers asked to be a dama (pseudo-brides-
maid) or a chambelán (quasi-groomsman) in the quince-
añera’s court (adolescent bridal party). I was thankful for the
bounty of story submission ideas I received, and was relieved that
there were plenty out there with a fun-loving sense of humor will-
ing to be frank about the freaky stuff that had happened to them
on the way to Quincelandia.
Aiming to steer clear of monochromatic depictions of the
quinceañera event, I’m proud to say that Fifteen Candles’ contrib-
utors are as motley as that ’80s rocker “crue.” They vary by
gender, orientation, social class, region of the Americas, and gen-
ix An Introduction
eration. And though they were chosen for their originality in
voice, experience, and point of view, in the end, their stories
are all surreptitiously linked by humor, sadness, and a lot of self-
discovery.
For those looking for a how-to book for planning a quince-
añera bash, please put this book down; this was not intended for
you. The parties depicted on these pages aren’t always that pretty.
Fifteen Candles aims to poke fun at the ritual, question it, re-imag-
ine it, challenge it, and see it through the eyes of a newcomer. Di-
vided into five thematic sections, these are candid snapshots of
fifteen writers looking back on their former, younger selves, try-
ing to understand what it meant.
For some, such as in the opening section, The Romantics, a hor-
monal high seemed to have propelled them through their experi-
ence. Writer Angie Cruz relives a shrouded first kiss with a
chambelán so cute, he could have been in Menudo, while actor and
lawyer Alberto Rosas cursed with looking like Antonio Banderas,
accidentally seduces both quinceañera and her mother. And teacher
and writer Constanza Jaramillo-Cathcart considers the reason her
dashing, white-suited date to a Bogotá quince never called again
might have had something to do with his family’s ties to the mob.
But of course there were others who had no time for flirt-
ing with all the responsibility they had to deal with. In the second
section, Queens for a Day, these are the writers who had to grin
and bear it as the quinceañera in headlights, ahem, spotlights. Res-
urrecting uncensored pages from her lock-and-key diary, journal-
ist Fabiola Santiago reflects on her humble party and compares it
to how her three very different daughters chose to turn fifteen
themselves. Editor Leila Cobo-Hanlon knew from the get-go her
dress had to be emerald green or she would go naked. Finding that
color was tough, but convincing the cool kids from school to at-
tend her house party was even tougher. Teacher and poet Nanette