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Experience With Poverty
Bodega Botanica Tales: Carmen follows a girl growing up in poverty, guided by unreliable adults and navigating friendships whose life changes when she is pulled into a mystical world of miracles and curses. Where did the idea for this story come from?
The overall inspiration for the Bodega Botanica Tales series came from my family’s move from a city to an island when I was a child. That move, for me, felt like an alternate universe. After a year of living on an island, my parents decided to move back to the city. I wanted to write a series on how disruptive these environmental moves/transitions can affect a kid, especially during the teen years. And Carmen, while completely fictional, draws from my own experience with poverty. I wanted to explore how stigma tied to poverty can shape a girl’s understanding of themselves.
What was your approach to shaping Carmen’s backstory?
I knew from personal experience that poverty impacts girls differently. That understanding led me to highlight period poverty as a theme. Even though Carmen narrates from adulthood, I intentionally kept the language simple and concise. My goal was for the reader to encounter the world exactly as Carmen does, and to move through the story alongside her.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The main theme is how poverty can affect how teens navigate their environment.
Can we look forward to a third installment in Bodega Botanica Tales soon? Where will it take readers?
Yes, third and fourth, which are Bodega Botanica Tales: Tito and Bodega Botanica Tales: Lucy, both installments will launch in 2026. Readers will get to know Tito and Lucy’s stories, each describing their own challenges and triumphs. Readers will get a chance to piece together what truly happened on that fateful day in Silk City and whether the Bodega Botanica is a real place. Stay tuned, Brujas!
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…until the secret she’s kept for years helps her claim it.
Carmen is thirteen, period poor, and desperate for protection, in a city where dangers lurk at every corner. Everything changes when she takes a bracelet from the local bodega, leading her to an alternate world. Now, as an adult looking back, Carmen must reckon with her actions. Some magic can’t be undone. Some lessons must be learned. And some stories must be told, even if no one believes them.
This is the second part to the Bodega Botanica Tales six-part series, which are coming-of-age stories across two timelines. Each story stands alone as a unique experience of childhood trauma, resilience, and the challenges of growing up.
Perfect for mature teen and crossover adult readers.
Bodega Botanica Tales: Carmen
Bodega Botanica Tales: Carmen is a magical-realism coming-of-age story that follows Carmen, a girl growing up in the rough edges of Silk City, where money is tight, danger feels ordinary, and a mysterious bodega might hold both miracles and curses. The book opens with Carmen navigating period poverty, unreliable adults, and shifting friendships, and soon pulls her into a world where a mystical figure named Chankla, glowing bracelets, and even chupacabras become intertwined with her very real struggles at home. The story carries her from childhood fear and survival into adulthood, where old wounds return and demand to be understood before she can move forward.
The writing is simple but charged. Carmen’s voice has this raw honesty that makes even small moments feel heavy in your hands. I kept noticing how carefully the author, Maria Rodriguez Bross, lets the magical elements slip in. They shimmer at the edges, like something you might catch from the corner of your eye. And because the emotional world is so grounded, the magic feels earned. The author doesn’t cushion anything either. Period poverty, family instability, and violence aren’t treated like plot devices but like daily realities Carmen has to navigate long before she should have to.
What I liked most was how the story keeps circling back to the same question: what does protection really look like, and who gets to have it? Carmen is just a kid trying to hold herself together, and sometimes she breaks in ways that feel relatable. I found myself frustrated with her, then proud of her, then worried for her, sometimes all in the span of a page. And when the book moves into the adult timeline, the consequences of what she lived through land with real weight. The magic expands, but it doesn’t erase anything. Instead, it forces her to face what she ran from. Some scenes feel almost dreamlike, others feel like they’re scraping the inside of your ribs, but they all build toward a truth Carmen has been avoiding for years.
The book blends mystical folklore with the grit of urban life in a way that feels cohesive, not gimmicky. And though it has fantasy woven through it, the heart of the story is emotional realism: trauma, friendship, shame, longing, and the slow work of claiming your own story. I’d recommend this book to readers who enjoy magical realism that’s rooted in real-world hardship, especially stories centering Latina girls and women finding power in places that once hurt them. If you like books where supernatural elements highlight emotional truth rather than distract from it, this one will definitely stay with you.
Pages: 146 | ASIN : B0G1RF7QGV
