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The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano

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Plot Summary

The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano

Sonia Manzano

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012

Plot Summary
The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano is a coming-of-age, young adult novel by author Sonia Manzano. The 2012 novel is set in 1969 in the El Barrio neighborhood of Harlem. It follows fourteen-year old Evelyn as she navigates her turbulent teenage years alongside a spur of activism in her neighborhood by the Young Lords group.

Author Manzano is best known for her role as Maria on Sesame Street, and has been influential in the lives of young adults and children for decades. Her childhood experience visiting her grandmother in Spanish Harlem served as the inspiration for the novel, which is based off of real-life events from the 1960s.

The novel starts with a debate between mother and daughter in the kitchen of their home. Evelyn seems to be annoyed with everything around her. She secretly criticizes the way her mother covers all their furniture in plastic and decorates with fake flowers. She refuses to be called by her real name, Rosa, because she says it is too “Puerto Rican,” and her neighborhood doesn’t need another girl named Rosa. Like most teenagers, she is self-conscious about her looks and dismays over her curly hair, which won’t seem to straighten no matter what she tries.



From the beginning, Manzano infuses Spanish words into the English text such as mija, my daughter, and la marqueta, the market. Evelyn reflects upon an old Puerto Rican expression, “tapar el cielo con la mano,” which translates as, “to cover the sky with one’s hand.” She thinks about this when she watches her mother, whom she calls a “slave,” do all the chores in their home without complaint. She wishes her mother would stand up for herself.

That same morning, Evelyn has to go off to work at a five-and-dime store in their neighborhood. She no longer wants to work at her parents’ bodega, so she got her own job. As she walks through the streets of El Barrio, she compares the smell of the rotting piles of trash on the street to a fart. She passes a neighbor selling snow cones, or piraguas, from a cart, and dismays that nothing ever seems to change in her neighborhood.

That day at work Evelyn lies to a colleague and says that she cannot understand Spanish very well in order to avoid speaking to her. A few of Evelyn’s friends from school come into the shop and she notices one of them steal a bottle of nail polish, but Evelyn does not confront her about it.



After work, Evelyn is surprised to see her Abuela, grandmother, at their house. She has not seen her grandmother in years and doesn’t know her very well. Evelyn’s mother tells her that she has come from Puerto Rico to live with them. Evelyn immediately notices how different her grandmother is from her reserved and cautious mother. Her grandmother is confident and flamboyant, and is more concerned about the piles of trash in the streets than the wellbeing of the family she hasn’t seen in years.

Evelyn’s grandmother soon starts to share with her stories of her family’s involvement in revolution back in Puerto Rico, and Evelyn is intrigued. She realizes that her grandmother is an activist and a revolutionary. Shortly after her grandmother’s arrival, a young activist group called the Young Lords sets fire to garbage piles in the streets to call attention to the inefficient waste pickup. A local church becomes a meeting place for the activists. Evelyn, inspired by her grandmother and the activists, begins to distance herself from her mother, who is opposed to the activism. The pair’s relationship becomes more strained as Evelyn struggles to figure out if her mother or grandmother is “right.”

The efforts of the Young Lords do not last long. A few months after they begin their meetings, the police raid the church as a member of the Young Lords is giving a speech. Evelyn, still confused about whose side to take, runs away from the action, leaving her mother and grandmother each holding a corner of the jacket she was wearing. She meets with her father, who came to the rally to locate her. She confides in him that she feels empowered by the Young Lords, and that they helped her to discover her identity.



In the end, Evelyn decides that neither her mother nor her grandmother is “right,” and that both of their opinions are valid. She also realizes that she doesn’t need to be “Evelyn” in order to be her own person, and chooses to use her given name, Rosa, again. According to The Bulletin Center for Children’s Books, “Evelyn’s journey combines a coming-of-age story with important lessons in Puerto Rican and Nuyorican history.” This helps to explain how Evelyn’s own journey mirrors the change in her own neighborhood, revealing the dual meaning of the world “revolution” in the book’s clever title.

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