review: The Story of My Anger

Title: The Story of My Anger
Author: Jasminne Mendez
Date: Dial; 2025
Main character: Yulieta Lopez
YA contemporary fiction; novel in verse

Jasminne Mendez is a Dominican American author, poet, playwright, performer, and educator. She is a co-founder and the program director for Tintero Projects, an organization founded to provide a platform for Latine writers along the Texas Gulf Coast. Mendez received her B.A. in English Literature and her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Houston. Mendez has had poetry and a memoir published both nationally and internationally and her first multi-genre memoir, Island of Dreams (Floricanto Press, 2013), was awarded Best Young Adult Latino Focused Book by the International Latino Book Awards in 2015. She has also had much success as a poet. Her debut poetry collection, City Without Altar (Noemi Press), was recognized with honors and awards by the Texas Institute of Letters. She provided the Spanish translation of the best-selling picture book, The 1619 Project: Born on the Water (El proyecto 1619: Nacieron sobre el agua) written by Nikole Hannah Jones, Reneé Watson and illustrated by Nikkolas Smith. In all she does, Mendez works to increase the visibility of Afro-Latine experiences. And so, in The Story of My Anger, Mendez writes about Yulieta (Yuli), a young Dominican American girl living in Texas.

Readers feel Yulieta’s temperature rise as she moves through aggressions that are thrown at her from teachers and classmates in a typical school day. It’s clear that the aggressions are based on Yulieta’s skin color, not her personality, and this is an important distinction for readers who are developing an awareness of racism. Yulieta’s anger is justified, but the question becomes what to do with these feelings. She is motivated by Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, a book that is banned during her school’s current political climate. Yuli cried when she first read the book.

I cried
because it’s a play
written in poems
where girls like me
get to scream
and be loud
and break things
and not be sorry
about any of it
where our tears and
our tantrums are handled with care. (p.11)

Her favorite teacher is prevented from teaching the books listed in his syllabus, while her least favorite teacher denies her a lead role in this year’s school play.

Ms. Hoffman
has told me:
“It would be hard
for an audience
to empathize with you.”
Which, Aleeyah, tells me
is code for:
The world isn’t willing
to love Black girls yet. (p.66)

Yuli is really angry and frustrated because she doesn’t know what to do with all that’s boiling inside her, something that rings true in our current political environment. She has so many decisions to make that don’t directly align with her needs and expectations, but that will make a statement about what those expectations are. Her brother tells her, “There’s more than one way to make your dreams come true. Ms. Hoffman may control who gets to play what part but you get to decide if you even want to be a part of what she has to offer.” (p. 106)

Mendez structures The Story of My Anger so that it demonstrates ways to express anger, the danger of holding it all in, and the need for community. Written mostly in verse, elements of the story are also written as a script and in this way, the power of the arts is made real.

I appreciated that Yuli is supported by family and friends who guide and support her decision making; they handle her with care. This story wouldn’t be as powerful or as culturally authentic if she were trying to be a rugged individual rather than a community member. The varied examples of activism will provide readers with direction and hope.

I know that no matter what happens next
I know that I’m playing the part
I was meant to play. (p.237)

be well and do good

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