"To Selena, With Love" By Chris Perez

I just finished reading “To Selena with Love” written by her husband Chris Perez.  

Such an emotional read. I am a Selena fan since I was about 8 years old. Eventhough she passed away 17 years ago, every year I remember her death and every time I think about the great artist she was becoming.

The book gave me an insight to who Selena was outside of the stage, as a daughter and of course as a wife. Chris did a really good job describing how their love developed in spite of her father's disapproval and their lives together once married.

 

It seems as if Selena suffered a lot due to her father’s pressures of focusing solely on her music versus venturing into the fashion world like Selena wanted. Selena was also very smart and knew how to get what she wanted from Chris, for she managed to convince him to get anything she pleased. For example, she was an animal lover and in total they had five dogs and a boa.

It wasn’t until the last couple of chapters that Chris talks about Yolanda Saldivar. He describes her as a cancer in the Quintanilla family. From reading Chris’ side of the story and seeing all the interviews that Yolanda has provided for the Latin America media, it’s obvious Yolanda had a serious obsession with Selena and seeked to control her every movement. Once the Quintanilla family perceived this and they found out that Yolanda was stealing from Selena, Yolanda became a different person. Chris also says how investigators found out that Yolanda had bought a revolver in the beginning of March and taken shooting classes, which means she intended on using this arm against Selena way before she actually killed her on March 31.

A lot has been said about how Selena had an affair with her doctor and that she was planning on escaping with him to Mexico or Brazil. All of these rumors of course stemmed from Yolanda’s interviews from her prison in Texas and most recently from the doctor himself. Whatever the truth is, in my world Selena was a great person and I will always and forever be her fan. I hate that these people are trying to ruin the image of who Selena was to her fans.

I can’t explain what Selena represents to me, the Mexican American dream or the successful career of a woman who rose to fame in a genre usually controlled by men. All I can say is that no matter how old I am and how stupid it seems I will always try to maintain Selena’s memory alive, through her music and her message of “the impossible is always possible”. 

Long Live the Queen of Tex Mex, Selena