The Denver Public Library recommends these library resources to enhance your theater experience of One of the Good Ones from Curious Theatre, showing this fall from November to December 2026.
Yoli has exciting news: she’s in love and ready to introduce her boyfriend to her family.
What should be a joyful gathering quickly becomes more complicated as differing perspectives, assumptions, and deeply held beliefs come to the surface. As conversations grow more honest, family members are forced to confront questions about identity, culture, belonging, and how we see one another.
Filled with humor and heart, One of the Good Ones explores the challenges and possibilities of connection across differences, reminding us that understanding rarely comes from easy answers.
What to Read
Our reading recommendation: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter follows 15-year-old Julia as she struggles with her grief after the death of her sister, as well as her identity as a Mexican-American growing up in Chicago. Like Yoli, Julia feels the pressure of living up to her parent’s expectations. Both works feature the dynamics of assimilation and the experiences of Latin American identity in the United States.
About the book: Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents' house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga's role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed.
What to Watch
Our watching recommendation: Follow the Sanchez family from their origins in 1920s Mexico to modern day East Los Angeles in this multi-generational epic that concentrates on themes central to the immigrant experience. The director insisted on casting Latin American actors, showcasing the hunger of audiences for authentic representation. Selected for the National Film Registry in 2024, this poignant film hit a universal chord when it came in 1995.
About the movie: Presents the three-generation saga of the Sanchez family as told by the eldest son. From the beginnings of his father's journey from Mexico to California in the 1920s, to his brother Chucho's tragic rebellion of the 1950s, to the stark realities of modern day, the struggle to live the American dream is sometimes darkened but never diminished for Paco Sanchez and his family.
What to Listen
Our listening recommendation: Written during a time that Karol G describes as “not unhappy but not happy,” this album came from her daily mantra: “tomorrow will be beautiful.” Feeling trapped in the role of the “big shot,” or bichota, the tracks on this album show that even powerful, confident women are allowed to be vulnerable, change, and grow. With help from longtime producer and collaborator Ovy on the Drums, and several guest artists, Mañana Será Bonito strives to cover the many sides of Karol G, using a bold reggaetón and electronic palate and relying on immediately relatable, yet sophisticated lyrics.
About the album: This reggaetón album is intensely personal, representing a time when the singer would repeat the title phrase "when nothing seemed to be going right" every day, yet Karol G effortlessly connects with the listeners with her warm voice. With its debut, the album made history when it reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 charts, the first all-Spanish-language album by a female artist to do so.
What to Download
Our download recommendation: One of the Good Ones and Rental House both feature an interracial couple interacting with in-laws; exploring (and satirizing) divisions between classes, cultures, and generations. While One of the Good Ones explores relations among Latin and Anglo Americans, the Rental House features a progressive Chinese/Anglo couple trying to get along with their traditionalist parents.
About the book: Keru and Nate first meet in college, brought together by a joke at a Halloween party (would a 'great white' costume mean dressing like a shark or a privileged Ivy League student?) and marrying a few years later. Misfits in their own families, they find in each other a feeling of home. Keru is the only child of strict, well-educated Chinese immigrant parents who hold her to impossible standards even as an adult ('To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,' says her father). Nate is from a rural, white, working class family that has never trusted his intellectual ambitions or--now--the citizenship status of his 'foreign' wife. Nevertheless, some years into their marriage, Keru and Nate find themselves incorporating their families into two carefully planned vacations.