Author Lilliam Rivera talks about ‘The Education of Margot Sanchez’

Everybody wants to fit in. But the 15-year-old Nuyorican protagonist of Lilliam Rivera’s debut teen drama, “The Education of Margot Sanchez,” is having a particularly rough go of it.

The novel is a coming of age story. It’s set in South Bronx where Margot is forced to spend the summer after charging $600 to her dad’s credit card on a stylish new outfit worthy of her prep school friends.

While Serena and Camille are vacationing with “the gorgeous Nick Greene” in the Hamptons, the teen is doing hard time in her dysfunctional family’s grocery store. There, she reconnects with old friends and falls for a drug pusher turned community activist, all along struggling to define where she belongs in the grand scheme of things.

“Margot is lost in a way,” Rivera says. “I think there comes a point in your life where you deny who you are and where you’re from so you can be someone else, and she’s in that moment.”

The character study told from Margot’s point of view came to the author after an earlier attempt at a young adult novel didn’t pan out.

Rivera, a Pushcart Prize winner and the host of the monthly show “Literary Soundtrack” on radiosombra. org, has been drawn to the genre since childhood. Her biggest inspirations include the books of Judy Blume and S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders.”

In fact, the book has been described by “Mama’s Girl” author Veronica Chambers “as classic as Judy Blume and, at the same time, entirely new.”

“I love trying to capture that voice, because everything is new,” Rivera says. “You’re trying to stand your ground and figure out who you are. I want to be able to capture that kind of conflict.”

Originally from South Bronx, Rivera went to Los Angeles 16 years ago to work in entertainment journalism. She now lives in West Hollywood with her husband and two daughters, ages 5 and 12.

But she’s still nostalgic for New York.

The city looms large in “The Education of Margot Sanchez,” but the struggles of this teen to reconcile her new self with her community is not unique to the urban setting.

It’s not unique to Latino culture either.

“There’s this pressure that you are going to save this family, and that means, ‘We’re going to give you what we didn’t have so you can do great — or else,’” Rivera says, with a laugh. “Margot goes to a prep school where the kids who are doing great are these really popular kids. So what does she do?

“Very quickly, she has to find a way to emulate them and establish herself because her family’s hopes and dreams are riding on it,” she says.

For her effort, Rivera and her slice-of-life drama have been feeling the love.

Karen Joy Fowler, author of “The Jane Austen Book Club,” hails the author as “a voice to remember.” LennyLetter.com calls the novel “a bildungsroman for brown girls and anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t fit in.” According to the American Library Association’s Booklist, it’s “a debut of great candor, depth, and empathy.”

“It’s been amazing,” Rivera says. “But you know what’s really great? I get emails from young readers who received an advanced copy of the book, and they go on and on about how much it means to them to see themselves in the pages and relate to Margot’s struggle. All I ever wanted is for young people to read it and connect with it, and I hope it’s just the start.”