The Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes

Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate.

Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest ( Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State. The aforementioned J.Lo is reportedly involved in development talks. “If Hollywood pretends we all look like Penelope Cruz and J.Lo, the Latin media pretends we are all like a Swedish exchange student or Pamela Anderson,” says Lauren Fernandez, the Boston Gazette’s first and only Hispanic columnist, hired by her white-shoe Harvard-educated boss, Chuck Spring,“ to connect to the Latina people or whatever.”Īn upscale telenovela with well-drawn, charmingly flawed characters from an author who explodes some myths (while cementing others). They take turns speaking, in rotating chapters, and we follow them through their relationships with each other (they aren’t all equally friendly), their relationships with men (married, cheating, abusive, unsavory), their upbringings (prim Catholic New Mexico pilgrim, Cuban gentry, dirt-poor in Columbia), their careers (TV anchor, newspaper reporter, rock singer), and their reactions to stereotyping. They’re all different in background, style, attitude, color, sexual proclivity, ambition, and fluency in Spanish. The sucias are loyal friends, but they all have secrets-a laundry list of universal female issues with an ethnic twist that they’ll reveal to the reader and slowly to each other. It’s their tenth anniversary, and they run the gamut from magazine founder and editor to not-so-happy Miami housewife and mother of two from bulimic to large and loving it.

Here come the sucias (translation: dirty girls)! Six irreverent, successful, determined, in-your-face chicas who joined forces in college and continue to get together twice a year in Boston to compare notes on life and love. A journalist employs the conceit of female friendship in a predictable but affecting debut that takes a long, hard, and funny look at life in the US for Latina women.

The Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes