Who are the Model Ricans? They’re the characters on the Latino family TV show you didn’t get to see growing up in the 1980s alongside the Huxtables and Who’s the Boss?
DAD is the first in his family of Ricans to attend Brooklyn Tech and win awards that are hard to earn.
MOM is the first in her family of Ricans to work in Manhattan and move from the city to the suburbs.
BIG SISTER is the first in her family to go to college and study engineering.
LIL BROTHER is still emerging, but his mind is clearly mathematical and constantly storing data like a little robot.
DESIREE is sandwiched between her siblings, possessing the same mathematical abilities, but distracted by her gender and cultural baggage.
On top of that, her Barbie was saying things like: “Math Class is Tough!”
But Desiree is a Genx/Millennial MODEL RICAN.
She is being raised in academic environments post Title IX that tell her she can DO or BE anything.
She is in the U.S. learning about women like Grace Hopper, who clearly was NOT afraid of M-A-T-H (it’s not a 4-letter W-O-R-D, y’all).
While Big Sister does not feel fazed by the patriarchal culture of her college, Desiree observes the power girls in middle school, and unconsciously plots her climb to the top with the help of her new BFF Marga Nieves, who has just moved to SnOrlando from Vieques, Puerto Rico with her mom and her Tia.
First question an editor would ask the writer: What does Desiree want?
To not be invisible. To be powerful. To be regarded as intelligent, interesting, fun, funny, beautiful, talented, curious…
Editor: Ah, all the superficial things. What does she NEED?
Attention from her family. She jumps out her own bedroom window in the middle of every night to see if they notice. But they don’t, so she keeps going to more extreme measures by calling a taxi cab to see if they wake up to stop her. She is taking a huge risk just to get her parents’ attention. And she fails. Very miserably until they finally find out she’s in real trouble.
Editor: So, the story arc is essentially — A girl who feels invisible risks her life to become visible.
Hmm. Yeah. That works. But I’ve also been saying: “A Nuyorican reluctantly becomes a Mickey Rican with a little help from her fam, her BFF, and a little bit of brujeria.” Doesn’t that sound like the best idea for a Latino Family TV show?
Editor: Why should we read MODEL RICANS?
It’s fun while understanding the interior world of a girl constantly being underestimated by the world around her.
It’s also fun to see Desiree’s visions of the future as animated shorts I made in the last nine years. Example: The Femmebots Kickstarter I launched in 2017 in New York City showed me envisioning the future that is now, 2023 (although I was a bit early and predicted 2019). I laugh as I write that. Cuz I know the reader is like, oh give me a break, you pretentious “futurist!!!!” LoL
But hey, MODEL RICANS is still #1 in the Futurism category on Wattpad.
This video shows that I knew AI would taking my job long before ChatGPT came along in 2023.
And so, even though this reality has come to pass for all of us, I am still convinced that one of my stories is going to hit it big time.
MAYBE it will be MODEL RICANS: THE Latino Family TV Show
I am publishing the story specifically on Wattpad, a Canadian-based platform that allows writers to compose their novels like a series on Netflix, because the AI is baked in, and being a writer in Hollywood is not who I want to be.
A storyteller is really all I am. Readers can add comments like they do on Facebook, so holla! This is supposed to be fun. I imagine anyone who went to WPHS will want to check out this novel-in-progress because it takes place during that time when everyone’s lenses were acclimated a very specific way. I also imagine anyone I went to elementary school with in New York will want to check it out because your girl went a bit nuts after leaving y’all. I mean…don’t all tweens go a little nuts? Anyways, we all just had our 30th high school reunion so it might be both fun and painful to go back and read about it from the perspective of a little Puerto Rican girl trying to fit herself into a place that is too small for her big ass hahahaha.
If you decide to check out my first young adult novel Model Ricans, beware! It’s full of adventure, rule-breaking, woke politics (before they were woke), and of course a female protagonist who just wants to be seen by the white boys who rule the school.