I'm nervous to try and put this book into words. What do you say about a book that is so well written, thought provoking, smart, witty and heart breaking? Diaz is a master of words and the art of a lyrical sentence. And how someone can write so confidently of so many eclectic topics is most impressive; Politics, culture, slang, myth, spiritualism and Sci-fi just to name a few of the covered areas in this book. But yet, the story moved forward (and at times backwards) and you enjoyed it so much you didn't realize that you'd been referencing the Spanish to English dictionary, Urban dictionary, English dictionary and Google search just to keep up with every masterful sentence! 
 I don't have the right words to explain this book, so I'll just choose a few of my favorite lines and let them speak for themselves: 
 "You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mama Mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest." 
 "The next day he woke up feeling like he'd been unshackled from his fat, like he'd been washed clean of his misery, and for a long time he couldn't remember why he felt this way, and then he said her name." 
 "And if I could have I would have broken the entire length of my life across her face, but instead I screamed back, And this is how you treat your daughter?" 
 "Telling Beli not to flaunt those curves would have been like asking the persecuted fat kid not to use his recently discovered mutant abilities." 
 "A thousand tales I could tell you about Abelard's imprisonment - a thousand tales to ring the salt from your motherfucking eyes - but I'm going to spare you the anguish, the torture, the loneliness, and the sickness of those fourteen wasted years, spare you in fact the events and leave you with only the consequences (and you should wonder, rightly, if I've spared you anything)."