Helena Maria Viramontes 'Growing'

In the short story “Growing” by Helena Maria Viramontes, the author focuses on the forces that separate women from being themselves and rights to live their own lives. In the story, the father forces the youngest sister in the family, Lucia, to chaperone her older sister, Naomi. The reason he compels Lucia to chaperone her sister is to report Naomi’s every action, behavior and conversation to him. Despite Naomi wonders why her father refused to trust her and put someone to spy on her, the only reply from her father is “TU ERES MUJER” (36). Naomi was being punished just because her gender identity. Viramotes describes, “He thundered like a great voice above the heavens, and that was the end of any argument, any question, because he said those words not as a truth, but as a verdict, and she could almost see the clouds parting, the thunderbolts breaking the tranquility of her sex” (36). Her father is now transformed into a God who can

Naomi argues to her mother and wishes her mother would agree with her. Naomi claims, “Ama, the United States is different. Here girls don’t need chaperones. Parents trust their daughters” (35). The United States is the land of free, people who live here deserve freedom. However, her mother has no rights or abilities to teach her daughter why things are right or wrong. They all live in the house where her father is in charge of everything. Things are right when her father agrees with, and things are wrong when her father disagrees with. Also, Lucia chastises by her father too. Lucia did not voluntary wants to chaperone her sister, but her father forces her to go after her sister and report everything. Naomi points out that she enjoyed hunting lizard and playing stickball with her cousins when she was in Lucia’s age. However, Lucia did not benefit these pleasures because she has to be a big mouth follows after her