How to Love You When You’re Gone

Gr 8 Up–One thing Auggie has always known about himself is that he’s meant to be a writer. But as a middle-class white kid with a loving family and stable home life, he doesn’t feel like his life is worth covering. Instead, he writes about the imagined life of a writer in New York. That is, until he meets Mayte. The two have a disastrous blind date but decide to fake a friendship for the sake of their respective best friends. As Mayte spends more time with Auggie and opens up to him about her abuelita’s cancer diagnosis and how she is struggling to balance helping care for her disabled adult sister, Aida, with her schoolwork and social life, she realizes maybe she doesn’t hate him quite so much after all. When a tragedy occurs, Auggie is convinced that writing Mayte’s story will help her grieve—and maybe help him find success as a writer, too. After Mayte discovers the story on his laptop, Auggie is left to mull over accountability and impact versus intent. Told from the alternating perspectives of Auggie and Mayte, it’s easy to empathize with them, even when they’re frustratingly short-sighted. While only Auggie, Mayte, Abuelita, and Aida feel like fully dimensional characters, their relationships with secondary characters shine. They hold each other accountable, practice forgiveness, and show understanding. Mayte and her family and Colombian, all other characters default to white.