Growing Up

"Wildwood" is a quintessential contemporary coming of age story in that its youthful first-person narrator looks back on their life so far after a period of struggle and heartbreak forcing them to confront their pain and fear as the progress through certain key rites of passage on the way to some life-altering awareness or sense of redemption.

Lola mentions nothing in her life before age eight when she is commanded by Mami to stuff the fear and pain resulting from a sexual abuse, suppression which alters Lola's development as an emotionally healthy girl. Stifling down her trauma also makes her resigned to absorbing Mami's abuse and undermining tactics, which Lola escapes in part by assuming the grown-up responsibility of caring for helpless Oscar. These experiences force Lola to grow up quickly in a way that bypasses her chance for normal childhood of sleepovers and schoolgirl...