Growing up, I watched films like The Parent Trap and It Takes Two , ‘90s classics where twin protagonists meet at summer camp and carry out shaving-cream and water-balloon pranks amid the most exciting cabin wars. I wanted so desperately to go away to camp for myself, to play tug-of-war, toast marshmallows, and then whisper under covers to a group of girlfriends I only saw a couple weeks every summer. And even though my Puerto Rican mother sat on the plastic-covered sofa next to me, also laughing when the identical characters fooled the adults around them into believing they were each other, she never budged when I’d beg her to sign me up for a camp experience of my own.

“No, hay hombres,” she’d say, rejecting my pleas on the same grounds she’d use to deny my requests to sleep over at my friends’ houses, too. There were men there. Men she didn’t know.…