Stef Soto, Taco Queen

“Tía Perla, like always. Tía Perla, huffing and wheezing and looking a little bit grubby no matter how clean she actually is. Tía Perla, leaving anyone who comes near her smelling like jalapeños and cooking oil, a not-exactly-bad combination that clings to your hair and crawls under your fingernails. Tía Perla, Papi’s taco truck, stuffed into a parking space meant for a much smaller car. A normal car. A station wagon! Something beige or black or white, with four doors and power windows.”

The novel opens with Stef describing Tía Perla, and Torres sets up the relationship between Stef and the truck as well as the tension between Stef and her family. Torres highlights how embarrassed Stef is of her family by having Stef compare the food truck to a “normal” car. Despite all this, Stef’s reluctant affection for the truck also shines through, foreshadowing how she will come to appreciate Tía Perla by the end of the book.

“Just behind the library, there’s a small playground with a tire swing, a slide, and a couple of benches, and if you weren’t an expert in taco truck terrain, you might consider it promising. But I know from experience that you could park for hours at a playground like that and be lucky to see even a dog walker or two. One of them might come up to the window, but just to ask for a free glass of water.”

These lines show how Stef can’t completely separate herself from her dad and Tía Perla. In addition, Stef also realizes the hardship her family faces, even with Tía Perla as a source of income. Stef’s experiences are unique to her family’s circumstances, speaking to the theme Variation in Life Experiences and Perspectives. While Stef wants to conform to her peers, her life experience has been quite different.

“Scrimping was harder than I thought it would be, but also a little like a game with all of us pitching in to pinch pennies. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner we ate plain beans wrapped in corn tortillas—so many that I still can’t stand them. Mami stitched patches over the rips in my jeans instead of buying new ones. She also took in sewing projects from the dry cleaner’s around the corner, gathering needle and thread after dinner and settling down to repair a seam or fasten a button. I thought I could make some extra money, too, maybe walking dogs or pulling weeds. Mami and Papi said no to that. Instead, they put me in charge of making sure we never left the lights on in an empty room, and agreed to let me chip in the nickels and pennies I had stashed in my piggy bank.”

This excerpt describes the process Stef’s family went through to save enough money to buy Tía Perla, which highlights the struggles lower classes face to get ahead. These lines also show how Tía Perla started as a family dream, and it foreshadows how the truck will become a family project again by the end of the book.