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“Yesenia has figured out how to make everyone see her—she just has to change everything about herself. Yesenia Rivera is 17, Mexican American, and tired of being overlooked. When her mother gets a job opportunity in the Pacific Northwest, Yesenia sees this move as a chance to start over: She bleaches her skin, dyes her hair blond, and gets blue contacts, so that she can pass as white…but one person isn’t fooled. Guillermo “Willie” Rivera, who’s also Mexican American…Set in the 2010s, this debut, told in Yesenia’s and Guillermo’s alternating first-person perspectives, tackles some heavy topics, like colorism and internalized racism. The exploration of the journey of a brown Latine person who’s trying to pass for white is intriguing.”

—Kirkus Reviews

What We Did to Each Other

Written by Josuee Hernández
Published by Flux

It’s the early 2010s, and seventeen-year-old Yesenia Rivera hates everything about herself: her brown skin and wide nose, her curly hair and hand-me-down clothing, and her inability to fit in with either the Mexican girls or the white girls at her school. So when her mother’s new job requires them to uproot their lives and move to the Pacific Northwest, Yesenia devises a plan to remake herself completely. Cloaked in skin lightening cream, blue contact lenses, dyed-blonde hair, and a “whiter” name, Yesenia’s–aka Jessie’s–newfound ability to pass as white in her new school gets her the popularity she’s always dreamed of. Yet as her brazen confidence morphs into hubris, all it takes is a couple of slip-ups for someone to take notice.

Guillermo Rivera—aka Willy, an easier-to-pronounce nickname bestowed upon him by his classmates—is no stranger to sticking out at their predominantly white high school, right down to his too-small wrestling shoes. Bothered by how little he’s able to help his low-income mother and seduced by the prospect of financial stability, he reluctantly settles into a flattened, stereotyped version of himself in exchange for being needed by his white peers. But when selling to Jessie’s new friends pushes him farther out of his comfort zone and, dangerously, into theirs, both he and Jessie begin to suffer the mounting cost of what whiteness demands of them. The more they’re forced together, the more their tenuously crafted double lives threaten to crumble. Until one day, when those lives collide . . .

Primary ISBN: 9781635831078
Publication Date: September 2025
Available As: Hardcover, eBook
Young Adult, Age 14 or older

Community Represented:

Themes: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Setting: United States (Pacific Northwest)

Character's Place in the Immigration Journey: Unknown Arrival

Book Creator(s) Connection to the Community Represented: Own Voices/Lived Experience

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