Why would the daughter of a Los Angeles Laker coach fall for a poor Mexican teenager and consider changing her life to be with him?
My 61,000 word memoir, Flirting in Spanish, A Love Story tells how I came of age in a sports household dominated by my famous and bigger-than-life father, a basketball coach who led (sort of) the Los Angeles Lakers to an NBA title. When I flee this macho world for Mexico, I fall for a poor teenager.
Part travel/romance memoir, part fish-out-of-water story, Flirting in Spanish takes readers inside my novio´s upper-poverty home, where I share a room with him, his brother and his sister. Here, I cope with the lack of hot water and telephone service, and the stream of relatives who come to visit and stay for weeks. I learn how this barrio tribe exists - hand-washing clothes and selling fried chicken feet for extra pesos – and what it takes to be considered family.
The lack of comforts, though, is not my biggest challenge. To embrace my unconventional partnership and my simpler life, I have to accept myself and reveal the secret that made me run from the United States in the first place. When I do, I find my identity apart from being the coach´s daughter, my grown-up self and a genuine relationship with my father.