The Mirror Season

The Mirror Season is a difficult and beautiful novel about trauma – sexual assault, specifically – and it’s handled so compassionately, kindly, and brightly. Its central metaphor losing your magic after something unthinkable happens to you, left only with broken shards, works on many levels (as all good metaphors do). Ciela and Lock are brought together after one horrible night at a party, and their relationship is rendered realistically – they struggle separately and together. The something queer is pan: enchanted pan dulce, and a pansexual protagonist. 

The Mirror Season is a novel about two teenagers: a girl and a boy, who are both sexually assaulted at the same party. While this book addresses such important themes as injustice based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender, it is also poetic and exquisitely written, drawing on elements of magical realism that are rendered with immense care and depth. This book brings to light multiple important points of view through its main characters, including a queer Mexican American female survivor, as well as a White male survivor. These perspectives are so necessary but have not traditionally had enough representation… show more.