I first picked up this book because the cover was gorgeous and the title intrigued me. But then I started reading it and couldn’t put it down. It appealed to me in so many ways. As an immigrant who moved to the United States in my late twenties, I have often felt that I am in an in-between place – I don’t belong in my home country and neither do I belong here. Torn between identities, I feared that I would walk this no (wo)man’s land forever – that I would constantly have to be different things to different people. That is so exhausting and just what this book addresses among other things.

In “Chingona: Owning your Inner Badass for Healing and Justice” Alma Zaragoza-Petty has given me new perspectives and insights. Alma encourages the reader to embrace this in-between place because it is where we grow, it is where we are changing.

While her story and lived experiences are unique to her, there are so many instances that I can relate to as an immigrant and as a brown woman facing challenges and dealing with racism in a professional setting. How often have you been perceived as the problem while calling out the actual problem? She writes, “Owning your inner chingona means being unruly enough to question the status quo. But it is hard to balance the struggle of wanting to change the status quo while living inside of it. We all need to survive and make ends meet; how do we do that while resisting the very systems in which we are complicit? It takes intentional, subversive activity to work within an oppressive system.”

This deeply personal story is told with honesty and clarity and whether or not you come from a Latin heritage, we all want to be seen, heard, and valued. This is a book not only about healing, but a book that gives you permission to be unabashedly yourself even when the world is discounting you for it.