Carolina Ixta’s debut novel delves into the lives of Oakland teens

Carolina Ixta’s debut novel, “Shut Up, This Is Serious,” is a love letter to her hometown and Latino community that acknowledges their shortcomings while celebrating what makes them beautiful.

Nothing is off limits in this YA novel, whether it’s sex and teen pregnancy, religion, prejudice among minority groups, classism, sexism or mental health. Ixta, a teacher by trade and a writer at heart, felt compelled to address them all in a way that would be digestible for teens and knew a narrative was the best avenue.

“It’s all about story. I wanted readers to walk away with some form of education,” Ixta said. “I wanted this book to be an entry point without being a lecture or slide show. I wanted to imbed the lesson through the way of story.”

A coming-of-age story with a Latina protagonist is rare, said Ixta, who rarely saw herself reflected in the books she read growing up. “Shut Up, This Is Serious” revolves around two Latina teens growing up in East Oakland. Belén is a high school senior struggling with her mental health and trying to care about academics after being abandoned by her father and watching her mother grow more distant. Her best friend, Leti, is a star student determined to get into UC Berkeley while hiding an unexpected pregnancy.

Leti’s story is a powerful one, Ixta said, one aimed at helping readers better understand how kids from socioeconomically challenged communities who want to pursue higher education are expected to sell their traumas in college admission essays and interviews, putting their academic success in the background, unlike their better-off peers.

Leti struggles to be the daughter her parents wanted, her skin color is darker than her family’s, and she’s unable to talk to them about her pregnancy. Most heart-wrenching of all, she grapples with the deep-seated racism her family feels toward Black people, a devastating reality for a teen whose boyfriend, the father of her unborn child, is Black.

“She has wisdom others don’t possess,” Ixta said. “Her story doesn’t end at pregnancy. Her story begins with the pregnancy, and it ends with a transformational decision.”

Ixta also uses the teens to flip the narrative of the Madonna-whore complex. Belén’s womanly curves garner her unwanted attention, but she is a virgin who’s interested in having sex but picky about who she’ll do it with. Slender Leti, on the other hand, always has her nose in a textbook — but she’s the one who winds up pregnant. Ixta was intentional about making sure both characters have agency, that they choose when and with whom to have sex, but Leti serves as a cautionary tale for what can happen when kids are kept on too tight a leash.

“I wanted readers to understand the idea of promiscuity is a myth,” she said. “When we don’t allow children, and especially girls, to have safe conversations in teenage-hood, they’re still going to do what they’re going to do, but the consequences could be higher.”

Thought and care were also put into scene setting. Ixta, a UC Santa Cruz alum who got her masters at Cal, was born and raised in Oakland. So the authenticity and specificity of her story’s details extend from the setting — her main characters are from Fruitvale, not simply East Oakland — to the fruit stand and the Wendy’s Belén frequents.

The book also pulls from Ixta’s experience growing up in a Catholic family that immigrated from Mexico to Oakland in the 1970s. As a young Latina in the ’90s, she was witness to the colorism and anti-Blackness that permeated the Latino community, the harassment women experienced on a daily basis and the limited teachings of the Catholic Church, especially regarding sex and the woman’s place in the home.

She’s also watched as an ever-changing Oakland has been reduced to its worst parts — gang violence, sex trafficking and waves of petty crime — and her peers have been priced out of the area. Public criticisms of her hometown are valid, she said, but don’t paint a full picture. Recognizing that two truths can exist at once was important for Ixta. 

“(The book) was a very careful balance between depicting Oakland as a place I love deeply and also saying we have these really blatant problems. Both can be true,” Ixta said. Similarly, “being a young woman is beautiful. We have these wonderful friendships, coming of age experiences. Also, being a young woman, I would argue, is the most terrifying thing in the world.”

She hopes the story will resonate and act as a salve for other young Latina book nerds eager to see at least a portion of themselves reflected in writing: “The point of this book wasn’t to mirror your life but to hopefully be an entry point to give Latina women the window we need. I hope this book gives (them) peace, and if it doesn’t, I hope it pushes them to write their own.”