Structure

The memoir is divided into 35 chapters, and it uses a mixture of linear and nonlinear structural elements. Quiara relates her own personal experiences in a generally linear fashion, beginning with her early childhood in Philadelphia and then Malvern, moving to her youth in Philadelphia, then transitioning to her early adulthood at Yale and Brown. Quiara intersperses this narrative with anecdotes from her relatives’ lives, presented more in terms of theme and subject matter than in terms of chronology. Through these branching narratives, the reader learns salient facts about Quiara’s parents, cousins, and grandmother. The contrasts between the lives of her white relatives and Puerto Rican relatives highlight unjust racial disparities in the United States.

When Quiara recounts her experiences and those of her relatives, she chooses specific anecdotes that are representative of the larger patterns and social themes represented by those experiences. In other words, because...