If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self?
The book "Thirty Talks Weird Love" explores this concept in verse through the life and experiences of 13-year-old Anamaria.
Anamaria is an overachieving student struggling with depression. She’s attending a school in the Mexican border city of Juárez in 1999 — a time of heightened violence against women and girls.
Anamaria is visited by the 30-year-old version of herself, Thirty, who gives cheesy Hallmark advice and preaches about the importance of self-love.
Author Alessandra Narváez Varela said the seed of the idea grew from her own experiences growing up in Juárez and working with high school students.
“I would see myself as the traveler from the future trying to help my students realize how beautiful and perfect they were,” she said. “Through that very blessed interaction, I started thinking about my experience as a teenager and the lack of teenagehood.”
The book confronts mental health issues, growing pains of young adulthood, and the ongoing violence in Juárez.
Narváez Varela, instructor of creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso, said while the book draws on her own experiences, she and the character Anamaria are not twins.
“What I discovered throughout the process is that as much as a character might be similar to us, they start developing a will, an independence that’s very beautiful to discover and (also) sometimes frustrating as an author,” she said. “Having this kind of channel to this other voice, you want to impose your plans. And if you do that, then the story suffers.”
A Spanish version of Thirty Talks Weird Love will be released this fall.
Listen to the English version narrated by Narváez Varela here.
