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Latinx Literature (Identity (Sexuality (image ("Every Dominican…

- - - - What I should have done was check myself into Bootie-Rehad. But if you thought I was going to do that, then you don't know Dominican men. Instead of focusing on something hard and useful like, say, my own shit, I focused on something easy and redemptive" (Diaz 175).
    - - "I'd made up my mind after that last phone conversation to end things the next time I saw him in person. I didn't want to face him yet, but I didn't want to set off any alarms for my mom either. She loved him; he called her Mom [...]" (Crucet 56).
  - - - "Did it kill me that he was spending with with such a fly bitch? Of course it did. I always though of myself as the Kaneda of our dyad, but here I was playing Tetsuo" (Diaz 184).
    - - "We didn't talk about what might happen next; we were tough guys, and brave" (Torres 68).
  - - - "Omar was lucky; he was still just one Omar -- not broken like me, an El and a Liz trapped in one head" (Crucet 224).
    - - "I wanted to look at myself as he had; I wanted to see my black curls peeking out from under my ski cap. What did he make of my thin chest?" (Torres 115).
  - - - "Every Dominican family has stories about crazy loves, about niggers who take love too far, and Oscar's family was no different" (Diaz 45).
    - - "We had seen flesh, but still pictures, women [...] We boys, we had always seen so much of them, penniless or flush, in and out of love with us, trying, trying; we had seen them fail, but without understanding, we had taken the failing, taken it wide-eyed, shameless, without any sense of shame" (Torres 97).
  - - - "[...] it wasn't that they didn't want to hear; it's that they didn't even know to ask. That their idea of me had no room for what I was doing with my life made me want to fold in half [...]" (crucet 161-162).
    - - "Si, you're right, and, my son, I have to love you because only your mother could love you, un negrito and ugly" (Thomas 19).
    - - "And me now. Look at me. See me there with them, [...] They smelled my difference -- my sharp, sad, pansy scent [...] All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud" (Torres 105).
  - - - "Even brought him out with me and the boys. Not anything serious - just out for a drink when it was a crowd of us and his monstro-ness wouldn't show so much. (The boys hating - What's next? We start inviting out the homeless?)" (Diaz 176)
    - - "We proceeded to have an awkard conversation about the DJ ad whether or not he was sketchy [...] I guess he was pretty sketchy, I said, trying out the word. It was sweeter-sounding, more innocuous, than skeezy or grimy -- words that would've felt more natural coming from my mouth but that didn't really describe him. Sketchy was it. Sketchy was perfect" (Crucet 127).
    - - "I don't know how you come to be my brother, but I love you like one. I've busted my ass, both me and James, trying to explain to people how come you so dark and how come your hair is so curly[...]" (Thomas 146).
  - - - "I got pride in you hijo [...]I saw the look of white people on me when I was a young man, when I walked into a place where dark skin wasn't supposed to be. I noticed how a cold rejection turned into an indifferent acceptance when they heard my exaggerated accent. I can remember the time when I made my accent heavier, to make me more of a Puerto Rican than the most Puerto Rican there ever was" (Thomas 153).
- - - - ""(Fuku?) Whatever it was, the shit started coming at the family something awful and there are some people who would say it's never ever stopped" (Diaz 248).
  - - - "I waved and waved, willing him to see me, to wave back, and we both kept at what we were doing, our attempts at saying something never understood, until the distance between us made it impossible to know when the other gave up" (Crucet 380).
      - "The father sits on the edge of the tub, foot in hand, inspecting, rubbing, humming. He takes his time, moving the washcloth slowly up one calf, then the next" (Torres 122).
    - - "You don't know the hold our mothers have on us, even the ones that are never around - especially the ones that are never around. What it's like to be the perfect Dominican daughter, which is just a nice way of saying a perfect Dominican slave" (Diaz 55-56).
      - "Mom, I said. It's not the first time someone's taken care of a kid. I mean, I get it, but it's not like what she's doing is actually that hard [...]I knew this was the wrong this to say. I didn't even really belive it, but I needed to say it to her. I was trying hard. What I was doing was fucking hard" (Crucet 239).
      - "Next thing you know everybody will be wanting a bag lunch -- I'll be up all night cutting bread into little triangles, this one with mayonnaise, this one with mustard, no pickles on mine, but mustard on one side please. You kids just like to invent more work for me" (Cisneros 43-44).
      - "It was odd to hear her say your mother, and for a while I allowed myself to believe that we had a different mother, who tried to help Ma, who filled Ma's purse with snacks" (Torres 70).
      - "I pick her up and lean her against me, whispering, 'I love you, baby, and I am not going to hurt you,' but the first thing is a lie and the second might be a lie, but I'm just not sure" (Machado 49).
    - - "James tried hard not to look at anyone. Jose tried, through a swollen eye, not to look like he'd made a choice between a brother and a color" (Thomas 149).
      - "When we were brothers, when we were all three together, we made a woman" (Torres 24).
    - - "Two days later he broke down and confessed to his sister about the gun stuff and she, back on a short laundry visit, slipped out. She got them both on their knees in front of the altar she's built to their dead abuelo and had him swear on their mother's living soul that he'd never pull anything like that again as long as he lived. She even cried, she was so worried about him" (Diaz 47-48).
      - "It was enough that one of us knew we'd been replaced. I couldn't tell Leidy what I'd seen-- where I'd really found our mother-- because Leidy should've been the focus of my mom's energy after I left, Leidy should've gotten more from everyone who supposedly loved her" (Crucet 353)
  - - - "A day later Lola arrived from Madrid. Didn't have a chance even to say a word before her mother launched into the standard Dominican welcome. So now you come, now that your brother's dying. If I'd known that's what it would take I would have killed myself a long time ago" (Diaz 191).
    - - "I wish I'd known, as I pushed through one choice over the other, how little it mattered which side I ended up betraying, how much it would hurt either way" (Crucet 388).
    - - "[...]why don't you come find us, why don't you do what you're supposed to do, come and find us, why don't ya, because you're bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, why don't you do right, why can't you do right" (Torres 51).
  - - - "I stayed at home and made sure Oscar was fed and that everything ran right while she was at work. I raised him and I raised me" (Diaz 56).
  - - - "My leaving had allowed for someone new to come in, and I'd been wrong all that time in thinking it was Ariel. The real replacement was right there in my mom's arms: someone she could be proud of, someone whose decisions she understood and would've made herself had it been her life, a daughter who'd taken on more than anyone thought possible but who'd done it through no fault of her own, who was blameless" (Crucet 352).
    - - "Poppa, [...] what's wrong with not being white? What's so wrong with being tregeno? [...] We gotta have pride and dignity, Poppa; we gotta talk big and bad. I'm me and I dig myself in the mirror and it's me[...]" (Thomas 147).
    - - "But that restraint shifted before my eyes into an embrace; somehow, at the same time that they were keeping him back, they were supporting him, holding Paps upright, preventing him from sliding to the floor himself, and in that moment I realized that not just Ma, but each and every one of them had read the fantasies and delusions, the truth I had written in my little private book" (Torres 117).
- - - - "Here he is, future generation of de Leons and Cabrals: the man who stole your Founding Mother's heart, who catapulted her and hers into Diaspora" (Diaz 115).
  - - - "Her version of our life made me more Cuban than I technically was, degrees of Cuban-ness being something I'd never thought about until Rawlings, until the Where Was I Frome From question. Mami's invented version made me a more authentic Cuban, and part of me wanted to hear her tell it" (Crucet 229).
  - - - "What I saw there was another kind of spectacle: signs down the whole block, saying WELCOME and YOU ARE HOME. I blinked and breathed through the rush in my chest, then remembered who the signs were really for" (Crucet 140).
    - - "No speak English, she says to the child who is singing in the language that sounds like tin. No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into tears. No. no, no, as if she can't believe her ears" (Cisneros 78).
- - - - "They believe that not only did Trujillo want Abelard's daughter, but when he couldn't snatch her, out of spite he put a fuku on the family's ass. Which is why all the terrible shit that happened happened" (Diaz 243).
    - - "His terrified wet face shined right in my direction as I stopped in the middle of the street, and I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, because I knew he was big enough, old enough to remember this, that when he would have the nightmares brought on by this moment, I would be in them" (Crucet 347).
  - - - "Let's be honest though. The rap about The Girl Truijillo Wanted is pretty common on the island [...] It's one of those easy stories because in essence it explains it all. Trujillo took your houses, your properties, put your pops and your moms in jail? Well, it was because he wanted to fuck the beautiful daughter of the house! And your family wouldnt let him!" (Diaz 244).
  - - - "They say is came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn intoCreation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles" (Diaz 1).
  - - - "He never seemed to approve of Beli, or any of the other employees, but since she wasn't scared of him [...], he reciprocated by giving her practical instructions: You want to be a useless woman all your life? Like how to hammer nails, fix electrical outlets, cook chow fun and drive a car, all would come in good use when she became the Empress of Diaspora" (Diaz 106).
    - - I already know what each would say should I ever have to tell them about an upcoming research trip to Cuba: my dad would talk about being a little disapointed in me, about the unfairness of me being able to travel to a country he can't enter [...]" (Crucet 385).
- - - - "I opened my mouth to answer and Louie and I knew what was shakin' at the same fuckin' time. The difference between me and Louie was he was white" (Thomas 103).
  - - - "That night, as we sat to eat dinner in the area we called the dining room which was really just a table and three chairs set off by a square of linoleum a few feet from the couch, my mom was too frantic -- too happy -- talking about being interviewed, about the people she'd met[...] Mami said. So that's it, he can stay, that's the law. If you're Cuban and you make it to dry land, when you ask for asylum, you get it" (Crucet 51-52).
  - - - "At a red light, we stopped a few cars back from a tour bus. A voice from its loudspeaker floated to us: And next up, on the left, you'll see the eternal flame monument dedicated to those who died in the Bay of Pigs Invasion" (Crucet 140).
    - - "Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scaed. They think we're dangerous" (Cisneros 28).
    - - "Sometimes you don't fit in. Like if you're a Puerto Rican on an Italian block [...] I sure missed 111th Street, where everybody acted, walked, and talked like me" (Thomas 24).
  - - - "The mandatory meeting was run by several people, [...] I learned that stdents og color struggle more in college than our white counterparts. I learned that, when combined with being from a low-income family - the case for some of us in that room, one specialist said - your chances of graduating college fall to somewhere around twenty percent" (Crucet 82-83).
    - - "And then she made me stand up on a box of books and point. That one? she said, pointing to a row of ugly three-flats, the ones even raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn't my house and I started to cry. I always cry when nuns yell at me, even if they're not yelling" (Cisneros 45).
    - - "She smiled again, and I walked away not liking what I was feeling, and thinking Crutch was right. I fought against it. I told myself I was still feeling out of place here in the middle of all these strangers, that paddies weren't as bad as we made them out to be" (Thomas 84).
- - - - "At one point he reffered to magical realism as my literary tradition and asked me to explain that concept to my classmates. He held both his hands out to me then, like I was supposed to drop my genetically allotted portion of magical realism into them, pass it between us like an imaginary ball at a rave" (Crucet 177)
  - - - "My flight actually left at two, but almost as a family rule, we always ran late, and since I was the only one who'd seen my itinerary and my true time of departure, I gave us plenty of padding for our tendency to run on Cuban Time" (Crucet 57-58).
    - - "'Hey, you,' he said. 'What nationality are ya? 'I looked at him and wondered which nationality to pick. And one of his friends said, 'Ah Rocky, he's black enuff to be a nigger. Ain't that what you is, kid?'" (Thomas 24).
  - - - "When the first of the trucks passed me, I read the banner twice before understanding everything it meant. The letters and numbers on it, spray-painted in wide, black script on what I now saw was a king-sized white sheet, read: 1 DOWN, 800,000 TO GO!!!" (Crucet 369).
    - - "I was 'that damn nigger' and 'that black son of a bitch' [...] But inside me I kept saying, Damn it, I hate you -- no, not you, just your damn color" (thomas 90).
- - - - "The last time she tried to whale on me it was because of my hair, but instead of cringing or running I punched her hand. It was a reflex more than anything, but once it happened I knew I couldn't take it back, not ever, and so I just kept my fist clenched, waiting for whatever came next, for her to attack me with her teeth like she did to this one lady in the Pathmark" (Diaz 55).
    - - "Smack! I looked down from Chist's picture in time to see Alayce go sliding across the room on her ass, blown there by Brew's big-handed slap." (Thomas 160).
    - - "He didn't wait to get home but beat Manny right there in the field, the headlights scaling back the night, [...] He beat Manny bad; punched his face, punched his crotch" (Torres 83).
  - - - "My fists were tired and my knuckles hurt at this Cain and Abel scene. As the hurting began to leave me, I slowly became a part of my naked body. I felt weak with inside pain" (Thomas 147).
  - - - He never hits me hard. She said her mama rubs lard on all the places where it hurts. Then at school she'd say she fell. That's where all the blue places come from" (Cisneros 92).
    - - "When that thing happened to me when I was eight and I finally told her what he had done, she told me to shut my mouth and stop crying, and I did exactly that, I shut my mouth and I clenched my legs, and my mind, and within a year I couldn't have told you what that neighbor looked like, or even his name" (Diaz 56-57).
    - - "Two underage models are attacked while walking home from a club. They are raped and murdered" (Machado 65).
- - - - "In those blessed days of his youth, Oscar was something of a Casanova. One of those preschool loverboys who was always trying to kiss the girls [...] he was (still) a 'normal' Dominican boy raised in a 'typical' Dominican family, his nascent pimp-liness was encouraged by blood and friends alike" (Diaz 11).
    - - "I felt the roughness of his tongue as it both scared and pleased me. I like broads, I like muchachas, I like girls, I chanted inside me" (Thomas 61).
    - - "Paps leaned against the wall and watched her adjusting herself back into her harness; he grinned and he growled. We watched him watching her, we studied his hunger, and he knew we were seeing and understanding. Now he winked at us; he wanted us to know that she made him happy" (Torres 46).
  - - - "Recently she'd cut her hair short - flipping out her mother yet again - partially I think because when she'd been little her family had let it grow down past her ass, a source of pride, something I'm sure her attacker noticed and admired" (Diaz 25).
      - "I could've been somebody, you know? my mother says and sighs. She has lived in this city her whole life. She can speak two languages. She can sing an opera. She knows how to fix a T.V. But she doesn't know which subway train to take to get downtown"
      - The parallel verticle dents visible along my torso--almost full-fledged abs--surprised me, and I was mad at my body for taking a semester's worth of stress and looking better for it, for rewarding the punishment I'd put it through over the last month with results I hadn't been shooting for" (Crucet 217).
    - - "What he wanted was to suck Beli's enormous breasts, to fuck her pussy until it was a mango-juice swamp, to spoil her senseless so that Cuba and his failure there disappeared. As the viejos say, clavo saca clavo, and only a girl like Beli could erase the debacle of Cuba from a brother's mind" (Diaz 124).
      - "He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine. Sally, make him stop. I couldn't make them go away" (Cisneros 100).
      - "I turned into her, saw the swollen mounds on either side of her face, the muddied purple skin ringed in yellow. Those bruises looked so sensitive, so soft, so capable of hurt, and this thrill, this spark, surged from my gut, spread through my chest, this wicked tingle, down the length of my arms and into my hands. I grabbed hold of both of her cheeks and pulled her toward me for a kiss" (Torres 17).
    - - "You dread conversations with your mother. Those one-sided dressing-downs. You figured that she has called you in to give you another earful about your diet. Your mom's convinced that if you eat more platanos you will suddenly acquire her same extraordinary train-wrecking secondary sex characteristics" (Diaz 52).
      - "One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with they keys in the ignition. Ready to take you where?" (Cisneros 49).
      - "I am beautiful. I have a pretty mouth. I have breasts that heave out of my dresses in a way that seems innocent and perverse at the same time" (Machado 3).
  - - - "He was totally and irrevocably in love with Ana. What he used to feel for those girls he'd never really known was nothing compared to the amor he was carrying in his heart for Ana" (Diaz 44-45)
    - - I spent a good hour after hanging up sitting in the living room and promising myself I would not have sex with Omar, no matter how good he looked, no matter what else I ended up doing with him out of sheer horniness (Crucet 208).
    - - "I had not slept with a woman since my wife, but as she lifted her shirt I realized how much I'd been craving breasts, wetness, soft mouths" (Machado 38).
    - - "In bold ad explicit language I had written fantasies about the men I met at the bus station, about what I wanted done to me" (Torres 116).
- - - - Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro takes over and rules Cuban from 1959-2008.
      - Rafael Trujillo rules in the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination is 1961.