When they encounter big feelings, young people often feel confused. What do they do with their anger, resentment, jealousy, or love? To help tweens better understand these overwhelming emotions that are capable of causing damage if not handled with care, Aida Salazar pens Ultraviolet. In particular, this novel in verse examines puberty, gender, first crushes, and rites of passage for young boys of color. It encourages a society that provides space to explore emotions, vulnerability, and hormonal confusion rather than burying them behind attitudes of being “macho” or “manning up.”
Afraid of bees and plagued by other irrational fears, Elio Solis tries to understand his 13-year-old “dude brain.” Entering eighth grade during this hormone-heavy time of “intergalactic changes,” he and his best friend, Paco, find themselves attracted to girls. For the sensitive Elio, who is into hip-hop musicals, Marvel comics, martial arts, and playing the piano, whenever he in in the presence of Camelia, “everything is real, . . . [and] ultraviolet feelings juke around [his] body that turn on places [that he] didn’t know existed” (17).
Named after a flower that is “so strong it takes two weeks to wilt when cut” (17), Camelia is “hella cool [and] supremely beautiful and strange in all the best ways” (17). An artist, she shares many of Elio’s interests, so the two form a couple. After being kissed by Camelia, Elio finds himself transformed: “I’m becoming like Spider-man except I’ve been kissed by a girl, not bitten by a spider, and maybe her kiss has given me the vision of a bee” (52).
From that point onward, all is anniversary gifts, the couples’ quad, and “ultraviolet shine” until Chava begins making moves on Camelia. When that happens, Elio decides to “have courage and be strong the Solis way” by fighting to get Camelia back. “Though I’ve never technically been in a real live fight, I know how to wrestle because of Paco and watching all those cockfights and lucha libre matches with Pops” (114). However, fighting Chava is really the last thing Elio wants to do. “I feel kinda sorry for the guy, wimpy paper clip that his is . . . . But I think Pops would say I’d have to ‘man up,’ so I’d take him on with my eyes wide open” (115).
After Paco and Elio attend a temazcal, “a sweat lodge like our relatives in Mexico use for cleansing” (130), Elio’s attitude for fighting shifts. In the Brothers Rising circle, the group of men and boys discuss topics like puberty, desire, biological urges, consent, and balancing emotions with a romantic partner. Besides helping the boys learn to hold their “feminine and masculine energies inside the same soul” (162), Brothers Rising encourages them to “disconnect from the ways of the colonizers” (162) and to search for a new path, one unburdened by conquest and hate. “It is time to rewrite our present and revive our connection to all living things” (163).
As Elio continues to face challenges in his relationship, he realizes he is a work in progress, always evolving. He further learns that it is normal to like more than one gender since “sexuality and gender are two different things, and both are on a spectrum like a rainbow” (243). Elio’s mother reminds her son: “Don’t let growing up into ‘a man’ rob you of being able to show your hurt in ways that will heal you and not hurt others. . . . Keep your heart open, amor. We need it from boys and men in this world” (298).
This is an important book, not only for these valuable messages but also for Salazar’s courage in confronting the issue of toxic masculinity and its effects.
Another significant angle that Ultraviolet addresses is the cell phone, which the Dad Council calls “the one-eyed brain-sucking monster” (243) because of its social media influencers that hijack the brain.
- Posted by Donna