Point of View

The point of view of With The Fire on High is first-person narrative, through the eyes of Emoni Santiago. Emoni, a teen mother, possesses a certain amount of maturity as the work begins but is conflicted on many issues that thwart her coming-of-age process. Most notably, there is a tension between Emoni's need to be a good mother to her daughter Emma while simultaneously establishing herself as a woman. Emoni's narrative vacillates between her desires for herself and her responsibilities to her daughter. The emphasis on Emoni's perspective as a mother is further complicated by the absence of her parents, her mother to death, her father to abandonment. Although Emoni has her caring grandmother to facilitate her final progression to adulthood, her experiences with parenthood shape her own perspective on motherhood.

Emoni's perspective on men is tainted by both her father's abandonment and the father...