Identity Theme Analysis

Negi is constantly questioning her identity, even before the move from Puerto Rico to Brooklyn causes her to have a full identity crisis. She wonders how or where she fits into her world, since her world is constantly changing, undefined, or uncertain, and she struggles to construct her identity when parts of her identity are unreliable or don't make sense.

When Negi is seven or eight, she begins to question Papi about what a soul is, coming to the conclusion that her soul is the part of her that she often notices walking beside her or watching her during highly emotional events. These out of body experiences represent a physical manifestation of Negi's split identity. By conceptualizing her soul as something simultaneously separate from her body and a part of it, Negi is able to more productively consider the different states of being that make up her identity.

As a young child, Negi wants to be a jíbara when she grows up. Negi describes jíbaros as proud country people whose art, music, and image are celebrated throughout Puerto Rico. She notes that stories by and about jíbaros are required reading at every grade level in school, and Negi's family regularly listens to a radio program that plays jíbaro music and poetry. Mami, however, tells Negi that she absolutely cannot be a jíbara, since Negi was born in the city. But this isn’t the only reason why Mami doesn't want Negi to identify as jíbara. Particularly once Mami moves the family to the city, Negi learns that though Puerto Rico celebrates jíbaro art forms, the jíbaro people themselves are ridiculed as being simple and unsophisticated by their city-dwelling counterparts. What Negi finds even more confusing than having her chosen identity thrown at her as an insult, however, is the fact that when her family lives in rural Macún, they do live like jíbaros, yet Mami insists that they reject the label. Negi is faced with the uncomfortable truth that the very identity she'd most like to assume is an identity that many, including her own mother, consider shameful and worthy of ridicule. This suggests early on that identity isn't as simple as choosing a label for oneself.

During Negi's school experiences, she constantly has to navigate a complex social pecking order that she struggles to figure out or struggles to fit into because it differs so greatly from the social structure at work in Negi's home. Because of this, Negi constantly has to code switch, or adopt different attitudes or ways of doing things depending on who she's around and what's expected of her. This often takes on a humorous bent, particularly when Negi is asked to participate in religious rituals or events despite the fact that Papi describes the family's religious identity as "Catholic, but not very good ones."

The necessity of code switching becomes even more pronounced when Negi moves to Brooklyn and has to navigate the even tenser social fabric of a public school made up of distinct ethnic groups, none of which offer her friendship or safety. In this environment, Negi isn’t able to find her place or begin to construct a more useful and true identity until she's accepted to the Performing Arts High School in Manhattan. However, to get into the school, Negi's advisors force her to adopt an overly Americanized and English-speaking persona, one that her interviewers find absolutely hilarious. Even though Negi doesn't realize it at the time, the interviewers are in awe of the fact that Negi auditions with a barely-intelligible monologue about a middle-aged, possessive mother-in-law at the turn of the 20th century, which requires Negi to adopt a persona that's hilariously far away from Negi's true self. The fact that Negi is both willing and able to perform the monologue at all reveals her years of practice at code switching and assuming new identities.

In the epilogue, the reader learns that Negi went on to study at Harvard, while in the prologue, Negi laments the loss of her Puerto Rican identity as she studies guavas in the grocery store. This juxtaposition of a major success with a sense of cultural loss suggests that even though Negi eventually experiences outward success, the process of constructing her identity is an ongoing and difficult one, and one that she'll struggle with continually as she seeks to reconcile her childhood desire to be a jíbara with her American educational successes as an adult.