How to be a Chicana role model

Michele M. Serros

Serros (Chicana Falsa, not reviewed) offers an unusual second “fiction,” a work that defies single classification. The story of “Michele Serros,” it’s a sly, hyperkinetic romp that’s part story collection, part stand-up comedy, part self-help for aspiring writers. Instead of chapters, Serros supplies the reader with 13 “rules” that could have come under the heading “I Didn't Know It Would Be This Way.” Serros’s road to UCLA and publication is pockmarked with misconceptions, some hilarious, others sad. Asked to attend a Chicana writers’ conference, she arrives to discover that she’s been hired to serve food, not read her poetry. But this energetic young woman doesn’t let the croissants or an apron stop her from reading at open mike, after which a small-press publisher offers his card, prints her book, then leaves her with boxes of copies to hawk on her own. No matter what she does,...

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