This story is a sequel of sorts to They Call Me Guero (Me dicen Güero), but can be read as a standalone. Set in South Texas, the romance between Guero and his new girlfriend Joanna is told in verse. Joanna is called "fregona" because of her toughness and many readers will relate to the resilience she has to demonstrate in her daily life. Told in flashback form, we get to relive the relationship that blossoms between the main characters during their seventh grade year. Joanna experiences an unspeakable tragedy when a bully she'd stood up to conspires with his father and a police officer to get Joanna's father deported. This novel is perfect for dual language secondary classrooms,with its use of translanguaging and Spanish terminology. It is also a culturally relevant text that incorporates Tejano culture. Readers will connect to the sense of community and the novel protagonists. It is a powerful story that highlights real-life experiences of today's students. A glossary is provided to help with Spanish terminology. This is a powerful story that will resonate with many different types of readers.

They Call Her Fregona is a story in verse and companion to They Call Me Güero. It follows Güero as he begins dating Joanna, the resident “Fregona” aka tough chick with a fuzzy heart. He has high hopes as they end the seventh grade! Güero spends the summer with Joanna and making music with his friends/bandmates of Los Bobbys.

The fun fades away when Joanna’s family is rocked by bombshell and Güero tries to find ways to support her. Their community isn’t as idyllic as he once thought.

This story is beautifully crafted!! I can’t believe it took me so long to finally get to reading it. These kids felt so real to me and reminded me of the excitement and giddiness of the puppy love I experienced as a pre-teen.
I really love the way Bowles included conversations around social justice, identity, and decolonization within Güero’s family. Joanna was so powerful! She’s authentic, caring, and resilient because she has always had to be. This is reality for so many of us. Although some of the storyline was tragic, the writing warmed my soul. I will be reading They Call Me Güero soon!

A companion book to "They call me Güero". in a multiple poetic tradition, "They Call Her Fregona" is a fresh take on a love story mixed with the drama of family life. They call her “fregona” because she’s tough, always sticking up for her family and keeping an eye on the school bully. We see her struggles as well as her triumphs.

This review is based on an ARC.

I was immersed from the start. I was new to this world and the author did a great job introducing the characters and setting so I was not lost or uninterested. It was a beautiful blend of different forms of poetry and added to the story's overall tone. The main character was a breath of fresh air and had a beautiful growth arc.

David Bowles flexes compelling, artful storytelling skills and poetic artistry in They Call Her Fregona, a terrific dialogue-driven novel told in different genres of verse, and narrated by Mexican-American middle-schooler, Güero Casas, a sensitive, lovable, loyal poet and musician with uncommon maturity and integrity. The titular Fregona refers to Güero’s strong, bully-crushing, intelligent girlfriend, Joanna Padilla Benavides.

Suitable for middle school readers and up, They Call Her Fregona is a sequel to one of Bowlesʻ previous books, They Call Me Güero, though I can attest that this novel stands perfectly on its own – no knowledge of the previous book required. Many of the poems also code-switch between Español and English, as many of the characters, including Güero, Joanna, and their families, are bilingual; for non-Spanish speakers, like me, Bowles includes a helpful glossary of terms at the end of the book.

The novel is told in flashback: it is Christmas, and Güero and Joanna are currently separated. Flipping through the pages of his journal, Güero recalls the blooming of their romance as seventh graders experiencing first love, and the journey that he and Joanna have shared over the subsequent months, filled with both joy and sorrow. Trouble began the previous summer, when Narciso “Snake” Barrera, the vindictive grade bully, takes cruel revenge on both Joanna, who’d previously humiliated him, as well as Güero, whose father fired Snake’s father for theft. Snake gets his father to collaborate with a unscrupulous police officer, and the two men report Joanna’s father, Don Adán, who is undocumented, to the authorities. Joanna’s father is subsequently deported, and Güero, Joanna, and their friends and families come together to protest and attempt to find a just resolution to the problem.

Bowles does commendable work providing a culturally immersive experience into Güero and Joanna’s border town community, deftly addressing serious topics, such as immigration, deportation, colonialism, exploitation, cultural and gender identity, linguistic changes regarding pronouns like the singular, gender-neutral “they” and the inclusive “Latinx,” generational differences, pejorative attitudes towards Mexicans and Mexican Spanish, young love, racism, colorism, and social justice. I admired the author’s ability to contextualize these topics naturalistically, avoiding didacticism and preachiness. He also made an effort to diversify his characters and develop them in a genuine, non-diversity-checkbox way. For example, Lupe, one of Güero and Joanna’s close friends, is non-binary and suffers daily misgendering. Güero’s best friend, Bobby Lee, “Lee” for short, is gay and Korean-American, and the child of immigrants. The two buddies, having grown up together, have learned about each other’s cultural traditions, food, and home language, and even created their own private hybrid Korean-Spanish lingo: Hanmegsiko Sogeo. Most of all, They Call Her Fregona possesses so much warmth: it affirms family, friendship, community, and most of all, courage: the bravery to resolve conflict, build relationships, and speak one’s truth. Highly recommended.

I recently finished They Call Her Fregona by David Bowles, the follow-up to his award-winning title They Call Me Guero. This is a YA novel-in-verse set in south Texas. Guero and his girlfriend, Joanna, are experiencing young love at the end of 7th grade and throughout that summer. On the first day of 8th grade, a tragedy happens to Joanna's family, an all-consuming one that leaves Guero feeling helpless and determined to do something to help. This book has a lot of Spanish dialogue and words woven in throughout the text, with a glossary in the back for readers who may not be familiar with the language. Timely topics include immigration, gender identity, the term Latinx, and the sides of history not typically shared in pop culture. Bowles seamlessly weaves in these topics throughout the novel with realistic and positive depictions of how the characters approach these issues. On a personal note, I loved all the south Texas/Tejano nuances....this is one of those books that will provide a reflection to many Tejanos and Latinxs.