Blog Post 5

Blog Post 5

Yolanda was the tomboy of the family and got herself into trouble as a child. She is haunted by the memory of a kitten that she kidnapped from its mother, as well as the fear she felt as the family struggled to leave the Dominican Republic. Once in the United States, she had difficulty interacting with men in sexual and romantic situations, and eventually divorced her husband, John. This heartbreak led to a mental breakdown and the inability to use language in a meaningful way. This was a particularly traumatic experience since language was a particularly important part of her life as a poet. She returned to the Dominican Republic after her divorce in order to reconnect to her cultural roots, though she finds she has forgotten her Spanish and sticks out culturally. When faced with a challenging situation, such as car trouble at night in the middle of nowhere, she feels most comfortable in her identity as an English speaking American woman, rather than a Dominican immigrant. She is the sister who most enjoys taking on the role of storyteller, and she hopes to unfold the past to better understand the trauma that underlies the various struggles of the entire family. I really do not think that she has moved forward or backward because of anything yet, and the identity of her is encapsulated by lust for others.\

Something positive is also a major motif of the novel, nicknames. Throughout the novel, nicknames are used to convey a sense of intimacy. This intimacy can be positive, such as when the Garcia daughters refer to their mother as Mami to express affection. On the other hand, nicknames can convey a negative sense of being overly familiar, such as when John refers to Yolanda as Josephine, anglicizing her name and distorting her identity in the process. Also another positive thing would be snow, which also is a symbol in the book. Snow symbolizes hope for the future and the positive aspects of the American dream, as well as the terrifying potential of the unknown. Yolanda’s first experience of snow makes her think of atomic fallout, and she terrifies her class with a warning of imminent doom. Once she realizes her mistake, the snow comes to symbolize the culmination of her long-held hope to experience a mysterious and wondrous occurrence she has only heard about. The unique nature of each snowflake also symbolizes the possibilities that America offers Yolanda to explore her identity and express a new voice. Snow is a conveys a meaning of god, which could relate to a person v. god as a type of label.

A major source of race and identity in the novel if the family that it comes from, the Garcia's family. The interpersonal conflict within the Garcia family takes root during the point of political and cultural rupture, when the family had to leave the Dominican Republic. The fragmentation of the extended family in 1960 due to immigration leads to a spiraling dissolution of the Garcia nuclear family. As the girls mature, they grow increasingly distant from one another, their parents, and their relatives on the Island. Their integration into American culture tears them further apart from their family roots and leaves them badly prepared to deal with their parents’ more traditional perspectives. During Sofia’s rebellious phase, she leaves home and prompts a serious rift in the family. Carla’s clinical indifference toward the family also reveals interpersonal distance. The fact that the Garcia parents commit their daughters to mental hospitals so quickly indicates that they cannot reach out to their daughters during emotionally challenging times. Though the origins of the family conflict are in the past, the effects continue to reverberate even when the girls begin families of their own. I really agree with the Lin article when it says "And yet, while you're never fully aware, you're never fully not aware, either. Like many of the Asian American kids of my generation stuck somewhere between white and black, I filled the vacant parts of my identity with basketball and hip-hop." I feel as though many kids today face these problems along with the family issues, which both in turn shape someone's identity.