I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

Use these activities to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity. 

Write a Hyperbolic Story

A hyperbole is a literary term that refers to the use of exaggeration in order to convey meaning. For example, the popular hyperbole “I am so hungry I could eat a horse” does not actually mean that the person wants to eat a horse, but rather that the amount of their hunger is so great that they could imagine eating a large animal.

Within the novel, Sánchez frequently integrates hyperboles into Julia’s first-person narrative. For example, Julia says,“Amá says I can clean, do my homework, and if she’s feeling generous, she says she’ll let me watch telenovelas with them, but I’d rather poke my eyes out like Oedipus than sit through an episode of that garbage” (Chapter 9). The allusion to the story of Oedipus Rex, combined with the hyperbolic suggestion of gauging her eyes out, particularly in the form of a simile, emphasizes her dislike of telenovelas.

In this activity you will use hyperboles to exaggerate a story.

• In groups, first write a very short story, three to five paragraphs, about any subject.
• When you and your group are finished writing, trade your story with another group.
• Now that your group has received a new story, read the story as is.
• Now change the sentences in your new story to include as many hyperboles as possible. For example, if a sentence says: “The weather today is very cold,” you could change the sentence to instead read: “The weather was so I could feel my bones freeze.”
• When you have finished adding all possible hyperboles to the story, share your newly hyperbolic version with the class.

Teaching Suggestion: Encourage students to be creative in both the development of their story, as well as their hyperbolic edits. This activity can be directly linked with the third short answer/scaffolded essay question about the significance of hyperboles in writing.