In East Los Angeles, California, 18-year-old Ana García (America Ferrera), a student at a high school in Beverly Hills, struggles to balance her dream of going to college with family duty and a Early 2000s recession. While Ana's sister Estela (Ingrid Oliu) and their father Raúl (Jorge Cervera, Jr.) approve of her ambitions, Ana's mother Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros) resists the idea in favor of Ana helping Estela oversee the small, rundown family-owned textile factory, out of her desire to keep her family together and resolve their precarious finances.