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Latinx Literature (Sex (Sexual Abuse (Down These Mean Streets ("'…

- - - - "'Baby, I just want you to know...that you got fucked by a nigger, by a black man!" (189).
        
        Having been oppressed in culture and race creates situations for men to explore and exert power in other ways, in a frame of racial ambiguity that allows them to take advantage of society and sex in the same way that it has taken from them.
    - - "Paps came home with sleepy eyes and blood-flushed ears and started leaning against Ma, pressing her into the counter, pinching her in different places and Ma, who had been trying to leave for the Brewery, said 'Stop, stop, stop.'" (66).
        
        Sexual abuse and rape is not seen as such within the household; it's normal and passing.
  - - - "I awoke because somebody was touching me where only me or a girl should touch. I cam back, but my body was still relaxed. I felt my pants zipper being pulled open and cold fingers take my pee-pee out and being to pull it up and down. I opened my eyes to a shadowy scene of smoke and haze and looked at the owner of the cold fingers. It was Concha. (61).
        
        There is a difference between what "should be" and what is experimental and enjoyable. Still, sexuality outside of heterosexuality is seen as taboo and even disgusting in some cases.
    - - "In bold and explicit language, I had written fantasies about the men I met at the bus station, about what I wanted done to me. I had written a catalog of imagined perversions, a violent pornography with myself at the center, with myself obliterated" (116).
  - - - Sex is to please men, not women.
  - - - "...it was the little intimacies that he'd never in his whole life anticipated, like combing her hair or getting her underwear off a ling or watching her walk naked to the bathroom or the way she would suddenly sit on his lap and put her face into his neck" (334).
        
        Oscar is seen as "weird: and the opposite of all things Dominican. For him to enjoy the love and intimacy of sex more than the act of sex itself speaks to his anti-Dominican-ness.
    - - “Oh Trina, I thought, why didn’t you wait? Even if I didn’t write, what the hell did that matter? Jesus, girl, didn’t you take consideration the nights I’ve spent making love to illusions of you?… I’ve built up mañanas of us together and how it would be…Dammit, Trina, I didn’t touch you ‘cause I wanted it to be great when we got married—and I saved you for another cat. Dammit, dammit” (271-272).
- - - - Being black has different cultural connotations than being Latinx, even when skin tone is near similar. Furthermore, darkness is seen as a bad thing.
    - - Even when all Puerto Rican, there are differences in skin tones, with which Piri is heavily concerned with throughout his memoir. He has an identity crisis, with which his dark skin and Puerto Rican-ness are at the center.
  - - - Because of her Cuban heritage, other's in Lizet's life make assumptions about what and who she cannot be or do, and make sure that she knows that it is her race that is at the center of these issues.
  - - - Dark is animalistic, primal and strong. Light is dainty and pretty (to be desired).
- - - - The having, and not-having, in Down These Mean Streets shows that there is a cycle of poverty in Latinx communities, but even when getting "out" of it, the affluent communities that one moves into are less than accepting.
- - - - There is safety in home and what we know, even if those outside cannot and do not understand it.
  - - - Lizet is both included in the community at Rawlings and excluded from it because of her heritage. Instead, she is forced to navigate this ambiguous space where she has to identify as from a community that she is both from and not, to occupy a space in a new community in which her problem is the same.
  - - - "When we were brothers, when we were all three together, we made a woman" (24).
        
        In this text, the community is between the brothers, who have to daily construct their mother into a living, breathing human being to support them. They rely on each other in this way, and in many others in the beginning of the book.
- - - - "Poppa turned away from the door and rain into the back if the room, almost knocking me down. I smiled for the both of us. Poppa slammed his fist against the wall. The flaky, time-worn wall shook under the pressure of the angry blow" (40).
    - - "'He punched you in the face,' I said, 'to loosen up your teeth.' ... 'You think it's funny when men beat on your mother?'" (16).
        
        This book explores domestic violence in a way that is innocent and unbecoming because the children are too young to understand what it means, and see it as normal. They are prone to accepting lies and exploring pain and violence with their parents as they learn by watching.
    - - "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. That's why her skin is always scarred" (92).
        
        There are always excuses and cover-ups for domestic violence, and while none seem too convincing, no one in the community seems to care enough to keep asking questions or to stop the violence.
- - - - Even though white culture would see the barrio as a bad place, it is home and identity to some within Latinx culture because it is free from judgement and there is more belonging and acceptance there for them.
  - - - Home is more than a physical place. It is comfort and having one's belongings and space, as well as being able to report to none other than oneself (in adulthood).
  - - - Home is fluid for some because it does not have to be a physical place or location, and because identifying with a single location can be painful, or even impossible, for some.
- - - - European colonists are at the root of Latinx oppression.
  - - - "What she doesn’t yet know: the cold, the backbreaking drudgery of the factorias, the loneliness of Diaspora, that she will never again live in Santo Domingo, her own heart."
        
        Being split up and dispersed into American culture at the height of the Trujillo regime separates Latinx people from their culture and their heritage in ways that are profoundly painful, like separating someone from the core of their belonging and identity, only to have to work to prove oneself in white culture (for naught).
    - - "'We're never gonna escape this,' Paps said. 'Never.'" (60).
        
        Race and heritage underscore and undermine opportunity in America, so the hurt keeps hurting.
- - - - "If she is her family's daughter--as I suspect she is--one day she will stop being afraid and she will come looking for answers" (330).
        
        There is a sense that family matters, and is the source of intergenerational trauma and bad luck. It is something out of our own control, and provided by destiny instead.
  - - - A desire to explain the unexplainable with magic, to use American culture and terminology to explain it, is central to Latinx storytelling.