Characters / The Dirty Girls Social Club

The Sucias

In general

• Five-Token Band: Well, six. A half-Cuban, half-white (Lauren), one Cuban Jew (Sara), a Colombian (Elizabeth), a half-Dominican, half-Puerto Rican (Usnavys), and two Mexican Americans (Rebecca and Amber).
  • This also extends to their religious (or lack of) beliefs: Lauren is (presumably) an atheist, Rebecca and Usnavys are Catholics, Elizabeth is a born-again Christian, Sara is a Jew, and Amber practices a form of Aztec spirituality.
• Latino Is Brown: Discussed and deconstructed by the sucias. Their group includes two White Latinas, two Black Latinas, and two actual brown Latinas who are out of touch with their heritage, yet the four non-brown Latinas fall victim of American media frequently portrays all Latinas as having brown skin and raven-black hair. Case in point, the editors at the Boston Gazette purposely darkened Lauren's face on billboards to invoke this trope, and don't consider Elizabeth to be truly Black because of her Spanish last name.
• Token Minority: It's implied that the sucias were the only Latinas in their journalism and communications program back in Boston University.

Lauren

Lauren Fernandez

A self-described "half-New Jersey Cuban, half-white trash" journalist for the Boston Gazette.

• Ambiguously Bi: She sleeps with Elizabeth, and apparently likes it. Yet this event, or mentions of her orientation are never brought up ever again.
• Freudian Excuse: Lauren admits that she desperately tries to find a man who will love her to make up for the fact that no one had cared enough to love her when she was growing up (see Parental Neglect). Her parents' trashy, uncaring nature and lack of ambition is what also motivated Lauren into becoming an overachiever.
• Has a Type: Although not explicitly stated, Lauren seems to have a preference for Latino men, despite holding low opinions of them. This could be justified since Lauren is more familiar with men of her ethnicity, combined with the fact that she never seems to meet men of other ethnicities, and she doesn't trust white men.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Lauren went most of her adult life getting into nowhere relationships with sleazy men in hopes that she will find true love.
• Internalized Categorism: Due to issues with her Cuban father, Lauren has twisted view of Latinos, which occasionally extends to her friends. She'll even think poorly of herself for being Latina, not helped by the fact that she faces racism and sexualization from her bigoted white coworkers.
• Parental Neglect: Her mother was a white trash drug addict who was more worried about getting her next fix than about her own daughter. Her father, despite being the more caring parent by default, spent most of his time reminiscing about pre-Castro Cuba.
• The Un-Favourite: Lauren is this to her mother, who favoured Lauren's brother because he became a trashy drug addict like her.

Usnavys

Usnavys Rivera

A fat and proud Puerto Rican/Dominican-American who's the vice President of the United Way, and gives the runaround to her college sweetheart Juan.

• Berserk Button: Implying that she's fat, or suggesting that she cut down on her expenses.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Usnavys thinks she's this, but if the second book is of any indication, she's actually morbidly obese and a borderline diabetic.
• Freudian Excuse: Her excessive materialism may have stemmed from growing in the Jamaica Plain projects in extreme poverty.
• Gold Digger: She looks down on Juan for not being able to buy her the luxuries she desires on his meager salary, even though she makes more than enough to get those things herself. Ultimately downplayed in that she genuinely loves him.
• Lady Killer In Love: A female example. Usnavys juggles multiple men at once, but only has eyes for her college sweetheart Juan Vazquez.
• Rags to Riches: She goes from living in poverty in the projects in Jamaica Plains to an overwhelmingly wealthy vice president of the United Way.
• Really Gets Around: Downplayed in which Usnavys loves to have at least two or three men at any single given time, but never actually sleeps with them. Ultimately played straight in the sequel as a way of alleviating her dissatisfaction with her marriage to Juan.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Cruz

A gorgeous Afro-Colombian and news anchor at a conservative news station, who also holds a dark secret.

• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Lauren describes her as "scary beautiful", and worked as a runway model before she became a news anchor. This makes her a target for sexualization, which comes down on her hard when she's outed as a lesbian.
• Twofer Token Minority: She's a Black Latina lesbian. Her boss even proudly bragged how he got all the diversity advocates off his back when he hired her for this reason (except for the lesbian part).

Sara

Sara Behar-Asis

• Domestic Abuse: Sara is repeatedly beaten by her husband Roberto, whether it's because he suspects her of cheating (when she's not), or to vent out his frustration if he loses a court case.
• Extreme Doormat: She believes she deserves all the abuse Roberto gives her. That is, until he kills their housekeeper and causes her to miscarry.
• Happily Married: The image she tries to portray to the sucias. It's anything but.
• Horrible Judge of Character: She believes Roberto really is a good man, despite his abuse of her. Just when we think she's wised up by the end of the first book, the second book shows that her deliberately going back to him, convinced that he's changed. She even flips out at the sucias who try to make her see reason, accusing them of not knowing what true love is.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Despite being heavily pregnant, this doesn't deter Roberto from beating her near-death.

Rebecca

Rebecca Bacca

• Embarrassing Nickname: Lauren calls her Becca Baca.
• The Fundamentalist: By the second book she becomes tight with her Catholic beliefs, notably how she refuses to get a surrogate to carry her baby, and when she decides to go through with it, she refuses to let Cuicatl be the surrogate because the latter previously has an abortion. She's also uncomfortable being around Elizabeth after she came out as a lesbian.
• Hypocrite: Rebecca's very strict about her faith to the point of coming off a bit rude to some of her friends (especially to Elizabeth). She then admits to touching herself to cope with her failing marriage to Brad, seemingly overlooking that masturbation is a mortal sin in the Catholic Church.
• Internalized Categorism: Rebecca claims to be white Spanish, though the second novel downplays this by revealing that she genuinely didn't know of her Indigenous roots, and readily accepts the truth after Cuicatl researches her family tree. Though the fact that her very obvious Indigenous appearance didn't clue her in to her true heritage suggests that this trope might still be in play.
• Ironic Name: Her last name Bacca sounds a lot like vaca, Spanish for "cow". The word is generally used to refer to a fat person, yet Rebecca is the skinniest of the group.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Rebecca's parents were furious that their daughter divorced her "perfect" white husband to marry a Black man.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Rebecca admits to the suciasthat she's "haven't had sex with anything but her own hand" in ten months due to the passionless marriage with Brad.

Amber

Amber Quintanilla/Cuicatl

• Category Traitor: She calls out supposedly "whitewashed" Latinos, such as Rebecca (with justification) who claims to be Spanish, and even extends this to celebrities such as Cameron Diaz and Christina Aguilera. She herself becomes a target of this when she signs a million dollar record deal to sing in English and Spanish, the two "colonizer" languages she'd been bashing up until now.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": After her Aztec naming ceremony, she insists in being called Cuicatl, shutting down anyone who calls her by her "colonizer" name. However she'll occasionally let it slide from her friends whenever they're in distress.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted. In Dirty Girls on Top, she reveals to Rebecca that she had an abortion back when she was with Gato.
• Granola Girl: She follows a vegan diet supposedly to mimic the eating habits of her Aztec ancestors. Either she doesn't know or deliberately ignores that even the Aztecs ate the occasional meat and fish when it was available.
• One Name Only: Prior to her naming ceremony, Amber played under her first name only, dropping her last name Quintanilla to avoid being associated with late Tejana singer, Selena.
• Rags to Riches: She starts off as a lowly bar singer who lives in a ratty apartment and has to borrow money from the sucias, and ends up a multimillion dollar world famous singer.

Partners

Ed

Ed

Lauren's Tex-Mex fiancé who's secretly cheating on her.

• I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: His excuse to Lauren when she catches him having sex with another woman in their bed. He "reasons" that it's better that he lets out all his urges out now than after the wedding. Lauren understandably doesn't see it this way.

Amaury

Amaury Pimentel

Lauren's Dominican boyfriend, and second fiancé.

• Attempted Rape: When Lauren finally confronts him about his affair with a teenage girl, he tries to calm her down by trying to force himself on her
• Ephebophile: He's discovered to be carrying on a sexual relationship with Marisleysis, a fourteen year old girl (and Lauren's protege).
• Pretty Boy: He's described as such by Lauren.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: When Lauren asks Amaury if he had used condoms while sleeping with Marisleysis, he merely states that she was a virgin—as if that negated her ability to get pregnant.

Juan

Juan Vasquez

Usnavys' on-and-off boyfriend, later fiancé.

• Extreme Doormat: Juan repeatedly tried to express his love for Usnavys through his meager salary and refusing to even court another, despite all the emotional abuse he receives from her.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: The last straw in his marriage to Usnavys is when she takes out the last $6000 money they have after they go broke, and spends it in a shopping spree. He immediately filed for divorce and takes their daughter Carolina back to his native San Juan.

Selwyn

Selwyn Womyngold

Elizabeth's girlfriend and an accomplished poet.

• Abusive Parents: She openly despises her adopted toddler son, simply because he's male. She repeatedly neglects him while under her care. When he begins to cry (usually for food), she chalks this up to "male entitlement".
• Butch Lesbian: She wears her hair in the stereotypical undercut.
• Does Not Like Men: Selwyn in a nutshell. This even extends to her innocent male child.
• Meaningful Name: Her last name contains the word "womyn", which in feminist discourse is considered an (somewhat controversial) alternate spelling of "woman" that both serves to be more inclusive of queer women, and to remove the implication of women being a subsidiary of men. Quite fitting for this radical feminist.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After having had enough of her son and of Elizabeth standing up for him, Selwyn walks out on both of them.
• Straw Feminist: In the second book, Selwyn goes on a full-on misandrist rant about her and Elizabeth's adopted son.

Roberto

Roberto Asis

Sara's husband.

• Hypocrite: While hiding out in Argentina, he sleeps with various prostitutes. When he discovers that Sara had been cheating on him with one man after she had bought herself a black dress, he flies back to the States to kill her.
• I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: At a sucias outing with their partners years ago, Roberto groped Elizabeth in the ocean, whilst claiming that he was only doing what came naturally to him as a man.
• Karmic Death: He's killed in a collision with a truck while trying to kill Sara.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He has horribly backward views on women that would make a man from the 50s blush.

Andre

Andre

Rebecca's investor for her magazine, Ella, and later husband.

Brad

Bradford T. Atkins

Rebecca's husband.

• Book Dumb: Brad has been working on Ph.D philosophy thesis for eight years, and shows no signs of completing it, or even graduating. It's made clear that his wealth and family connections are the reasons why he is even allowed to remain the Ph.D program.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Brad marries Rebecca, a brown Mexican-American woman (no matter what she believes) partly to spite his racist parents, who look down on anyone who is non-white or an immigrant. However, he does this out of ethnic curiosity and fetishization of Rebecca, rather than out of any real love for her.
• Hypocrite: He frequently suggests to "kill the rich", yet he enjoys leeching off of his father's trust fund.
• Idle Rich: Brad fully relies on his trust fund, which is still plenty even when his parents cut off most of it. As he does not have to work, he spends most days sitting in the guest bed in front of his laptop with his pants off working on his doctorate thesis. When he is not slacking off at home, he spends most of his time at the library, or at philosophy seminars in Europe.
• Manchild: Brad spends most of his time in the guest bedroom in front of his laptop with his pants off, and the room is trashed because he couldn't be bothered to clean up. Rebecca having to leave him a list of chores to do while she is away at work is reminiscient of a mother and her lazy, unmotivated son.
• Race Fetish: Brad has a creepy obsession with Latinas. Lauren recalls a time when he was visibly sweating while listening to the sucias conversing in Spanish, including taking notes.
• White Anglo-Saxon Protestant: Brad to a T.

Gato

"Gato"

Amber's (later ex) husband.

• It's All About Me: Gato loves being at the forefront of the spotlight for his performances with Cuicatl. So when Cuicatl gets a million dollar record deal and becomes more famous than him, he hides his jealousy by accusing her of being a sellout and forgetting her roots, and quickly leaves her for another woman.
• Malicious Misnaming: Gato goes back to referring to Cuicatl by her former name, Amber, as he thought she didn't deserve her Nahuatl name for "selling out".
• Meaningful Name: His name in Nahuatl is Yoltzin, "small heart", which if Amber/Cuicatl had known before would've clued her in to her husband's selfish nature.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His birth name is never mentioned. This likely due to the fact that he's the son of a corrupt Mexican official. Either that or because, like Amber, he shed his Spanish "colonizer" name after aligning with the Mexica movement.

The Sucias' family members

Lauren's family

Lauren's father, mother, brother, and grandmother.

• Heritage Disconnect: Lauren's Cuban father initially refrained from speaking Spanish at home because his wife refused to learn it. After he divorced her and kicked her out of the house, he began to speak more Spanish around Lauren, presumably to get her to learn after she became the diversity hire.
• Double Standard: Lauren's grandmother blames Lauren whenever a boyfriend cheats on her, instead of, you know, blaming the man.
• Female Misogynist: Lauren's grandmother, who internalized in Lauren from a young age that she was inherently inferior to men. When Lauren tells her about Ed's cheating, the latter blames this on the former's appearance.
• It's All About Me: According to Lauren, her father raised her to think he was the most important thing in the world (right after Cuba).
• Lower-Class Lout: The family lived in a trailer home in New Jersey, where the mom and brother frequently dealt with drugs.
• No Name Given: Lauren's entire family, brother included, are never named.
• Parental Neglect: Lauren's mother was more concerned about getting her next drug fix than about her own daughter, while her father, while more loving towards her, occasionally ignored her to daydream about old Cuba.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Lauren's Cuban heritage comes from her nationalist Cuban father, who was more interested in the politics of Cuba than in paying attention to his daughter. Though he never appears in the story, his neglect (plus American society's racist views against Latinos) caused Lauren to have a warped view of her Latina heritage, resulting in her going after Latino gangbangers for affection.

Usnavys' family

Usnavys' mother, father, and brother.

• But Not Too Black: Usnavys' mother made her believe that she was light skinned (she's dark), and forbade her from dating dark skinned men.
• Disappeared Dad: Usnavys' found fatherhood too stressful, so he walked out on the family when his daughter was still a toddler. He comes back though, albeit briefly.
• Parental Substitute: Usnavys' brother filled in the role of father figure in his sister's life after theirs walked out on them. This comes to a brutal, tragic end when he's gunned down by a gang.

Rebecca's family

Rebecca's mother, father, and her son.

• Colorism: In keeping with their belief that they are white, they happily approved of Rebecca's marriage to Brad. Her mother is furious when the latter reveals that she and Brad have divorced (when it was Brad's idea), and is even more furious when Rebecca marries a Black man.
• Extreme Doormat: Rebecca's mother allows her husband (whom she calls "el patron"—the boss) to control her life, as is the way of in fundamental Catholicism. She had initially started a successful taco business in Alberquerque, but after she married Rebecca's father, he took the business from her, stating that her only job is to be an obedient wife. However, she makes her dissatisafaction for this lifestyle clear, and advises her daughter that she does not have to be like her.
• Hypocrite: Rebecca's father is a devout Catholic who supposedly espouses traditional family values by putting himself as the boss of the household, forcing his career wife to become a meek housewife, and sending his daughter to college to find a husband.
• Internalized Categorism: They refuse to acknowledge that they're Indigenous Mexican-American, instead believing themselves to be white Spaniards.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Having had enough of his mother-in-law's shit, Andre gives her an epic one, calling out on her backwards racist beliefs.