Lola And Her Old World Dominican Mother's Belicia

Throughout the development of this book, many themes and ideas about the book develop to help explain the characters and why they made the decisions they made. It is clear that one’s identity back in those days was connected to one’s gender and so I argue that even though the relationships between opposite genders seem more positive in the book, the same gender relationships are more stable even in their different degrees of tension.

We first see this through an observation of the relationship between Lola and her mother Belicia. It is clear that both Lola and her mother have a difficult time interacting with each other and showing affection to each other. In fact, it seems there is no affection at all between the two of them. Belicia, Oscar,

However, Lola has reached the breaking point and begins to retaliate to this kind of treatment that is obviously starting to make her feel inferior. As she tells the story later to Yunior, the narrator, she uses the word “duty” to indicate why her mother treated her the way she did. It was her Old World Dominican mother’s “duty” to keep her “crushed”. The word duty usually has a positive connotation associated with it with a sense of nobility and loyalty. Partnered though with the word “crushed” it now takes on a sinister feeling and there is now a different meaning to the word now. Given the way that females are treated elsewhere throughout the book, it could be inferred that Belicia feels she is preparing her daughter for the harsh world ahead of her in an age where there was no sense of equality and men were deemed as being superior to women. Belicia herself went through some harsh

She says “Platano maduro no se vuelve verde” (Diaz, 208) which means a ripe banana cannot turn green. Through these words Lola was trying to say how once you lose your innocence, you can’t get it back- she is also referring to things that Belicia went through when she was growing up. From here it shows there are widely different expectations and feelings between this particular Dominican mom and her son versus her daughter. Lola had hoped that as her mother neared the end of her life, she would be able to show Lola the affection she never could show her as Lola grew up. Looking back on this part of her life as she is now a mother, she now fully understands that her mother’s experiences are what shaped her and made her who she is. Belicia couldn’t change the years she spent as a small child growing up in extremely abusive, and almost life ending circumstances and as a mother, she raised her child in a way she thought would be best. From Lola realizing and understanding this, we already see hope that she will be able to raise her child better than her mother had raised her. Since Lola hungers for a different relationship with her mother, she seems to feel an emptiness, an unresolved need that never gets filled even at the end of Belicia’s life. Belicia only gives this to her son when she cries for him, “My