Gringa by Melissa Hart

Set in 1970s Southern California, Gringa is a coming-of-age memoir of a girl caught between two extremes. Her mother leaves her father to begin a lesbian relationship, taking Hart and her two siblings to a Hispanic neighborhood of Oxnard, where the new surroundings and Latino culture begin to shape her. Her father offers well-to-do, predictable, white-bread security. When a judge rules that being raised by two women is 'unnatural' and grants her father primary custody, Hart is left with fleeting moments with her mother and a growing love of Oxnard's Latino culture, shaped by the polarity of her parents' worldviews and caught between what she is 'supposed' to want and what she actually desires. The book looks at one girl's struggle with the dichotomies of class, culture and sexuality.