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Kindle Notes & Highlights
concentrate on not feeling anything, anything at all.
In her state of sleep, she is rejecting the outside world and still has to work on maintaining her isolation
father was a great musician, he said, there was nothing he couldn’t play. He played Latin jazz you know, downtown with the really good guys. After my mother passed away he stopped. He only plays for money now. He said there’s no point in playing music just for himself.
Different family experience presented. Father mourns loss of his wife, Son admires his father and tries to emulate
congas and play me the sound of a heartbeat. And I would start to play and he would say faster, faster, faster, and my hands made flips in the air kissing the drums. That’s when I felt close.
Symbol of a relationship between father and son. If son is able to respond correctly to what his father is trying to teach him, more likely to receive approval and bond.
Remember Tía, when you let me paint your toenails bright red and I pulled them apart and tickled them and you never even laughed. You said your feet were numb. Numb from walking in freezing weather without the proper shoes waiting for buses that never came. Bus signs that you couldn’t read. And you had to be waiting until someone told you the bus route had changed because of weather conditions. Then you walked mad miles, because you didn’t know where the trains were.
Profound memories, bonding. Also reveals some of the hardships faced. Language and literacy, cost of living, lack of understanding of the transportation system, needing to rely on strangers but afraid to ask unless there is no other choices, weather hazards
I never doubted my mother cared about me. I just wish our relationship could be more dramatic and I can tell her that I missed her while I was away just like the novelas,
Understands there is love but not accustomed to displaying, not taught
The candlelight makes the red satin sheets look like a pool of blood. My mother is swimming in them. It reminds me of my father, the way he looked from the fourth floor window. He was lying on the street, a crowd surrounding him, as blood gushed out of his body. The ambulance came minutes too late to save him.
Action connected to memory, her father's violent death.
And what is that T-shirt supposed to mean? You haven’t even been to D.R. I’m still Dominican. Mami tells me we supposed to be the most beautiful women on the planet, Flaca says, stretching her neck to take a better look at herself in the mirror over the dresser.
Dialogue about what it is to be Dominican, identification, nationalism, and clinging to promises of something better than the messages received in reality: not belonging, displaced, ugly, lost
People always trying to peek in the window, gossip running rampant on why my mother is the way she is. Is it God, the devil, psychotic behavior?
She just made herself tired to a point of immobility. Then finally when she slept it all off she realized that she could be happy once again. Some people resolve things in their sleep. Ay Soledad, in our lifetimes we have so much to survive.
Victor knows how fast word gets around. He can’t step on dog shit without there being an announcement. How else would Ciego know? That’s why Victor likes working in Jersey; it gives him another territory to play in. Word hardly ever travels across the George Washington Bridge.
System of communication in Washington Heights
I’m gonna fuck you up, maaaan. Ciego imitates him. If that’ll make you feel better, do it. I’m just telling you what I see. Your girl wears more makeup these days and I’s thinking you better marry her soon or she gonna find another. That’s all I’m saying. Women won’t wear more makeup if they ain’t looking around.
Boldness of as man who has nothing to lose. Wisdom greater when needs to compensate for a loss, greater appreciation for what is around him. Fatherly role in advising a younger man to be aware how his lack of commitment is leading to losing his lady
I ain’t gonna get married, Ciego. I’m twenty-nine years old. I ain’t gonna hook up with some chick like that at twenty-nine years old. Well, if Isabel is just some chick then she’s just some chick. Just telling you like I see it, that’s all.
What is an appropriate age to settle down for a man? Also, what is the role of his woman is she is "some chick"?
Ever since Ciego’s son died, he takes an extra paternal tone with him that Victor doesn’t mind at all.
Gotta worry, ’mano. Women like the nails clean, the hair neat. Don’t you know that? And if I was you I’d change your deodorant. You don’t smell too good for a young man. Women don’t like men that don’t smell too good.
Amigo, I don’t like to disrespect women like that. Women don’t like it when you talk about them, they don’t like it at all. Especially Dominican women, everything all hush with them. They like keeping things a secret.
Respectful of women
good with what I got in the fridge, but she figure it out fine. So we ate dinner, hush hush. Women don’t like to talk too much especially before doing it. So it won’t be too quiet I put on un bolerito, you know to set up the mood, ’cause I know she was there for some fucking, there’s no nice way of putting it, she wanted some fucking and I knew after we were done she would tell me her story. They always do. So I was patient. I eat, put my dish in the sink and walk myself to the bedroom. She stayed in the kitchen lavando the dishes. I could hear the water running and I like that, you know. I
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Interaction leading to sexual intimacy. Male perspective of what a woman is like and what it will lead to. Cook and washing dishes sign of a good, clean woman
You tickle her, you got a naked woman on your bed and you tickle her? You a fucking pendejo. Así mismo, I wanted to hear her voice. She had a laugh that only a woman with some meat on her could have, loud and voluminous. Then she tickled me back and we laughed for hours. Then she left. Never said a word, just left. You’re a fucking loco. What’s up with you? You can’t get it up or something? Be tickling women instead of doing them. You crazy. Sometimes I just want company, that’s all.
Opportunity to show that a man's needs are not always sexual intercourse, but other intimacies. The blind man is not ashamed to share such vulnerability to someone he treats like a son, hoping to impart wisdom.
Victor, young and lacking in such wisdom from other men in his life, like his own father, has difficulty understanding this perspective in relation to women who are primarily sexual objects to him
No wonder you smiling all the time, you have these bitches knocking at your door. But you an old man, Ciego. I don’t get it. Hey, don’t call them bitches. These are women who know what they want.
Of course it’s because I can’t see them. They think I can’t tell if they’re ugly or not. But they’re wrong there. I see them all right. I can see them good. Like the woman I just tell you about, who cooked for me and washed the dishes clean before coming to bed, she was a beautiful one. The shit is that she didn’t know it. She probably had a sister who got all the attention and she felt like she was nothing special. That happens to women, you know.
Understands the insecurities some women endure as one is compared to another, disrespected through name calling, and loneliness
Back in the day Victor thought he would never put a cigarette in his mouth. He became sick watching his father’s fingertips turn a coffee brown, from holding the cigarette so long. And because he was always trying to hide all the tartar on his teeth, his smiles were made up of half-ass lip lifts. Victor remembers having a hard time looking at him straight because he was so grossed out. But after seeing it day in and out, even the ugly things became normal. The constant spitting in the bucket, his piss in the can by the bed because his bladder could not hold on until he got to the bathroom.
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Influence of a father: son understand and dislikes bad habits and all that goes with it until it becomes normal and then he follows doing the same
Victor doesn’t like that Isabel is wearing more skirts lately. Short ones. He’s going to tell her he doesn’t like the look of her legs. That’ll make her stop.
Uncomfortable that his girl's attractiveness can be seen by others, makes him decide to insult her to repress her
Gorda mops Olivia’s living room floor with Agua Florida, especially blessed by la Viuda, who channels la Virgen Altagracia. Gorda has a hard time believing la Viuda has the power to channel Dominican Republic’s patron saint with all the problems the island has on its own. Why would she come all the way to Washington Heights. But la Viuda assures Gorda, that la Virgen Altagracia finds and protects Dominicans everywhere.
Cultural beliefs, the power of DR's patron saint
Don’t you know it’s bad to be so stubborn? It will destroy you to have so much desire for things. Believe me.
Gorda wonders if Manolo ever hurt Soledad like he did Olivia. She thinks about the way Soledad left home as if she was running away. She left without any warning. Gorda thinks how the girls are growing up and leaving them so fast.
Everybody tells Flaca that she and Caty look like sisters. They both have skin the color of cinnamon sticks, thin eyebrows and a tiny birthmark on their cheek. For months, Flaca has been trying to get Gorda to let her wear tiny braids like Caty so they can go around telling people they’re twins. Caty’s mother, who owns a hair salon said, she’d fix Flaca’s hair for free. I don’t want you to look like a cocola, Gorda said, as if it were the most terrible thing to be in the world. Caty ain’t a cocola.
Dominican girls and Black girls look alike
She and Caty decided if Flaca can’t do braids then they will both get their hair straightened. But of course every time she mentions Caty, Gorda’s excuse for giving her a hard time is that although she likes Caty and she doesn’t mind they’re best friends, she’s Haitiana, and Gorda doesn’t know about those people. Flaca knows her mother talks as if she doesn’t like people and then she goes ahead and does something nice for them. Like just the other day Gorda sent Caty’s mother a piece of Dominican cake, left over from her birthday. She even sent her oils for her temples when she found out that
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Opportunity to erase division between Dominican and Haitian but wall remains with the monther. As women help each other out but as two sides of the country, comparisons and distrust exist
There is nothing that messes more with someone’s head than when you look them in the eye. She doesn’t have to say what she’s thinking because just looking at them is enough. She plays this game with people. She starts to look at them until she catches them looking at her and then she stares back harder. No smile, no nothing. It bugs the hell out of them. Especially las blanquitas that come around the way.
Where here it is a cultural norm to look someone in the eyes out of respect, it is used in Washington Heights to intimidate. Also, sense of territory and competition among girls. Lots of distrust
What bugs her the most is that it’s OK for them to look at her. They think she doesn’t see them checking her out, but she sees them doing it, looking at her like she’s a piece of shit, and once she starts looking back at them, they get weird. Flaca thinks there’s something about eye contact that makes people feel less invisible. It makes people remember her. It’s like making the room dark and spotlighting just her and them. She staring, them squirming in their seat, not knowing what to do with their hands.
Further though about eye contact and what it means depending on who is doing the staring. Power play
Olivia’s father was just waiting until she was old enough to marry her off. Things were becoming very hard for them. Olivia knew her parents were looking for ways to move to the States. Gorda’s husband, Raful, hadn’t been much help. He never made the time to go with Gorda and fill out the papers to solicit her parents so they could live in the States. For Olivia, leaving home seemed like the better option. The Swedish man, balding head, rosy cheeks, who came through el campo one afternoon said he managed models around the world. He promised Olivia she would make enough money so she could buy a
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Role of a young girl in DR. Father uses her for financial purposes, migratopn opportunity. Choice s usually to run away for a better opportunity, but at her will not her father's.
Promises of European men of a better life lures young women
El viejo es bien, no jode mucho, Luz said. He told me it was to model, it’s not so far from the truth, she laughed uncontrollably. Que tonta somos, no? We pretend to be so stupid sometimes. Luz reapplied her lipstick in big wide strokes; it was the color of paprika.
Olivia wondered if the Swedish man visited Luz at night when she first started coming on these trips too. The Swedish man had come by their room late one night and watched Olivia sleep. She pretended to be sleeping when he pulled the sheets off her and sat on the bed next to her, jerking off quietly. When he was done, he left some change by her pillow. As soon as he walked out of her room, Olivia whispered, cochino, at him and put the money safely in the paper bag where she kept her extra pair
the first few men were the hardest. The men would be friendly and then Olivia would let them take her to their hotel room. They would offer her a monetary gift for her troubles. She allowed the licking, kissing, scratching. As long as she knew that once it was over she never had to see them again; that they were going away to Europa, far far away. She tried not to smell their acid skin, or taste them, mouths like sour milk. She would turn and lay on her belly, letting them come on her back. She learned that playing hard to get made them want her more, made them pay her more. They wanted Olivia
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Prostitution. A means of survival. Understand how to please men. No indication--yet--of trauma caused by her choice to be used by men.
He certainly wasn’t a Spaniard. Spanish men were so arrogant they never stopped a woman. They’d wait until she came to them.
Minor yet significant description of Spanish men
You could never mistake a woman from the capital. It’s something about the way they walk. And when they talk . . . they sing like pájaros; fast and fluid sentences fall out of their mouths.
Description of urban women in DR
I’m here on vacation. I live in New York these days, doing business you know. That’s where all the money is.
Representing the belief of the Dominican diaspora
Olivia met Manolo in his beach cottage late afternoons until early mornings for five days straight. In the evening they would take the rented moped around the island and he would buy her clothes and ask her to wear them when they went out to dinner. He was very strict with her. He didn’t let her speak in public. He said she didn’t know about certain things like ordering her own food. That there are things he’d like to do for her. He told Olivia how to wear her hair, the color to paint her nails, the way to swing her hips.
He, a dom, identified the perfect victim. I'm sure he knew she had been prostituting herself and had left home.
No, Luz, he’s not one of them, he’s one of us. He loves me for me. I can tell. It’s different with him. He treated me special.
Olivia wondered if she was perfect enough to marry. She wanted him to know about the baby inside of her but was afraid to tell him. She decided to wait as long as she could before she told him the news. She hoped the baby was his. Perhaps if she began to believe that Manolo was the only man who ever entered her, he would believe it as well.
can almost hear the other women in the store thinking to themselves, How is she ever getting married, she still doesn’t know how to pick fruit.
Cultural note
He pulls up his shirt sleeve and on his arm the image of his mother is tattooed. His mother’s dress wraps around his elbow and forearm. Her face is on his bicep, her hair pulled back, her arms are drawn around him as if she’s holding on to him. She’s beautiful.
Connected to his mother permanently through his tattoo
After living at home for almost three weeks, surrounded by my family who seem to only think about their needs and what’s happening in their own lives, I’ve come to realize how little they really know about me. And worst of all, not one of them has even taken the time to ask me if I’m painting, if I’m doing well in school. No one cares to see where I live. Caramel says it’s probably because I never invited them into my life. I tell her if they wanted to know they’d ask. Believe me, they’re not shy.
What do you mean? I find it inspiring. When was the last time you saw a Latina artist in a gallery? I never thought about it like that.
Art association. Whiteness versus color and representation of color
Caramel always smells like peaches and when she goes to work she wears cool vintage skirts with tiny tops that show off her small breasts. Better tips, she says, every time I comment on them. It sucks but it’s true, even the women tip better when I’m showing more cleavage.
Sexism in the work place
It’s like her body is doing what it needs to survive. It eats, drinks, even takes itself to the bathroom, but her spirit is somewhere else all together. I thought she was asleep? She is. She’s living in this sleep state. She’s nonresponsive. It’s all very weird.
Belief in the other world and transcendence
Why me? What has she done for me? She gave you life. That’s enough.
Resentment from daughter
Soledad, we need to start our own thing, make our own rules, where the sky is the limit. A place where our mamis can come and visit and not feel like they don’t belong.
I’ll go now, Caramel says. God forbid they see two spics in here, they might just start hiding their pocketbooks. They’re not like that, so stop talking that way. I’m really starting to feel like shit. I try to tell Caramel that if they hired me they can’t be all that bad. They hired you because you’re not brown like me and you have Cooper Union as your passport. With that attitude, Caramel, no one will ever hire you.
Two different perspectives from Latinas in regards to the way the people view them and why they would hire them
She pulls out the drinking glasses, carefully placing them on the stove to rinse them out. She feels someone push a glass out of her hand and it crashes to the floor. She makes sure she’s wearing her slippers with the plastic soles so she won’t hurt herself and quickly gets a dust-pan and picks up the pieces. She pulls out another glass, trying to be more careful. Again it falls from her hands. Crash. And another one and then another one. They break in big pieces onto the floor.
Presence in the room, connected to Gorda and possibly trying to communicate, warn, or punish
She stands still and waits, but nothing happens except for the first time in a long while she feels her body ache with desire.
What invisible force creates desire and how is it that Gorda is not alarmed at all by all the strange activities around her?
I tell you, Victor is going to get himself some trouble, I tell you he will. Every day it’s another woman. Ay papá, one day he’s gonna find himself with a woman pissed off enough que le va a corta el ripio.
Mother knows her son's indiscretions and supports him. Makes a general statement regarding getting himself in trouble one day with one of the women but she doesn't really worry nor stop him. This is acceptable behavior.
