Dreams Against the Odds: A Review of Furia

Growing up in present-day Rosario, Argentina, 17-year-old Camila Hassan lives in the shadow of her older brother’s dreams of fútbol (soccer) greatness while hiding her own from the family. Her embittered father lost his career to injury and mediocrity, leaving the family to eke out a lower middle-class living on her mother’s earnings as a seamstress. But for all his acclaim and his parents’ hopes pinned on him, Pablo lacks Camila’s talent. Sneaking out to play on a girls’ team, she becomes la Furia, one of the city’s greatest woman players and a top prospect for recruiting to the United States—if she can afford the tournament fees, convince her parents to let her play, and avoid injury and the violence against girls and women endemic to her neighborhood. One more complication is Pablo’s best friend Diego, now a superstar in Europe. Camila’s crush on Diego has turned into a more mature love, and the feeling is mutual. On a visit to Rosario, the two dodge paparazzi and navigate the demands of their separate dreams.

Yamile Saied Méndez’s first novel for teens weaves the joy and suspense of “the beautiful game” with the concrete reality of a contemporary girl growing up in the same neighborhood the author once called home. Méndez roots the reader in the hazardous turf of the soccer fields where girls are consigned to play, the popular music and soccer fandoms, the muddy unpaved streets of a Southern Hemisphere winter, the ever-present danger that men pose, whether they’re strangers or one’s own father. Though aware of the long odds she faces, Camila takes charge of her fate and, through the tutoring job with street children that she finds through Diego, she comes to realize that her actions and decisions serve as models for the younger girls of the barrio. When she dreams and goes after her dreams, so can they.  Furia is a powerful story that opens a window on a world both far away and close to home.

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