When Julián’s imaginings lead to dressing up as one of the adored mermaids, Julián’s abuela (grandmother) offers a necklace and they go to a festival of grown people dressed as mermaids (modeled after the actual Coney Island Mermaid Parade). Author Jessica Love moves between Julián’s imaginings and the details of the real world with grace. Love does start the book with “This is a boy named Julián,” so it seems more about a gender creative boy than a transgender girl—but of course, readers can imagine Julián’s future in many directions, with growing maturity and self-awareness.
While many have seen the book as a model of acceptance, others have criticized it for having an “intrusive gaze” (Love is White and cisgender) and “minimiz[ing] the real struggle LBGTQ members face in Caribbean culture where many of them are not accepted by society as they are in America.” As a White, cisgender reviewer myself, this is not my evaluation to make; I hope readers will make their own after weighing multiple perspectives.
Julián and family are Afro-Latinx.
