Diana Lopez at Barnes and Noble, San Pedro Crossing

The article below appeared in Conexion, published by the San Antonio Express-News.

Diana Lopez will celebrate the 5th Anniversary of the Society of Latino and Hispanic Writers of San Antonio by appearing as our guest author, Monday, July 13 at the Barnes and Noble, San Pedro Crossing, at 7:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

Dichos, real life and death
Elaine Ayala- Conexión

Diana López's new book “Confetti Girl” is for young readers but deals with the heavy topic of the death of a parent and the retreat of another.

Luckily, Lina Flores, a middle-schooler in Corpus Christi, is an optimist. It helps that her best friend lives across the street with a mom obsessed with cascarones and the Lifetime Channel. Lina loves science and sports and has her first crush.

During the semester in which “Confetti Girl” (Little, Brown & Co., $15.99) unfolds, Lina finds comfort in dichos, a tool that helped López organize the book and her character cope. A dicho opens each chapter. Among them, “Cada cabeza es un mundo,” or “Inside each head lies a different world.”

This is a second novel for López, who teaches English at St. Philip's College. In 2002, she published “Sofia's Saints,” about a Latina who lost her mother years before and is now facing another loss.

The new book has been out for a few weeks but already has positive reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

Unlike migrant, coming-of-age stories that readers of Latino fiction may be familiar with, López's story draws on her heritage but is a universal story.

“The story is about a girl who's Mexican American,” she says. It's “not about a conflict with her culture.”

Though both of López's parents are alive and well, the idea of loss offers lots of material. “What greater loss is there when you're still trying to figure out the world,” she says.

Cascarones are a major metaphor in the book. “We're fragile just like eggshells. We try so hard not to break, but maybe we should,” she says of the confetti-filled shells.

López will sign copies of her book at 7 p.m. Monday, July 13, at the Barnes & Nobles at San Pedro Crossing, 321 San Pedro Ave.