The novel starts with the main character, Iliana, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic to New York City. One of her sisters, Marina, had to go through psychological distress one time following being raped by someone. She often hallucinates or envisions spiders and other scary imaginations. Iliana has another sister named Rebecca who had to go through family issues such as domestic violence from her husband. Iliana tries to take advantage of opportunities such as going to a private university in New York City, but she is discriminated due to her race or class by other students. When writing the novel, Perez is careful with how she narrates Iliana’s story to avoid others making negative stereotypes about Dominican immigrants. Perez tries to narrate Iliana’s story in a way that suggests that Dominicans do not lead troubled lives and that her story is a unique case.
Home has a very negative connotation to Iliana and her family. This is because they have faced struggles in the Dominican Republic as well as New York City. When Iliana’s family thinks of home, they think of all the struggles they had to go through in the Dominican Republic with living in poverty and facing the harsh effects that the country had to offer with dictatorship. The sisters think about the worst experiences they have had in their personal lives. Although they settle in the United States, the daunting memories of the Dominican Republic are not been forgotten by Iliana’s family. Her family is still trying their best to find a place that feels homely to them, but they have some trouble adjusting to life in New York City or U.S.. This means that Iliana’s family is trying to recover psychologically and find peace within themselves. Home is more of an abstract than a concrete idea in the novel and is something that will have its meaning changed constantly. The meaning of home has become more positive to Iliana although her house is not a place a person would want to reside in. She felt this as her home felt like a place that was safe to her and free from bad memories.
Iliana’s family finds themself trying to deal with the challenges from contradicting cultures. The culture in the Dominican Republic seems to be different than that of the New York City. If a person were to transition from a bad place into a good place, their pessimistic thoughts that were a product of living in a bad place would not change. Culturally speaking, the environment that you grow up in can determine your perspectives of the world. Iliana’s father was disturbed by how a person he fell in love with decided to walk towards a storm and fell of a sea. Due to this, he is overprotective of his daughters in New York City. However, people in 1st world countries do not have a general lack of awareness in their surroundings. Usually, people of third world nations are more likely to have a lack of awareness of their surroundings or how to live properly. Another cultural challenge faced by Iliana’s family was that Iliana’s mother was not able to speak English upon her arrival to New York City. Despite this, Iliana’s mother does not even bother to assimilate into American culture or learning english. In addition, Iliana had to face some difficulty as she was faced with situations in which her identity was questionable. Iliana is a black person from a Latin American country, but she is not able to be fully accepted as black or Hispanic.
However, Iliana was able to make friends with people from both groups and get along with them. Regardless of the new expectations or standards of living in New York City, Iliana and her family were able to reconcile them with traditions of the Dominican Republic. For example, Iliana’s mother is able to stay true to her beliefs regarding the vodou religion although she had also started practicing in the adventist branch of Christianity. Although Iliana’s mother finds New York City to be a cold place, she still sleeps in bed without clothes as she did in the Dominican Republic. The gender roles that have been taking place in the Dominican Republic for Iliana’s family had also been the same in New York City. Papito, Iliana’s father, had still been the leader of the family and house.
However, gender roles in New York City are more flexible meaning that women are able to do things that men do. Iliana’s mother has some freedom in allowing Iliana to meet a man she likes even though Papito would not allow it. Also, Iliana’s mother would be seen as a leader of the house at times when Papito feels emotional around her for things regarding sensitive family matters. In conclusion, the transition from Dominican Republic to New York City has proved to be a tough at first as Iliana’s family was not able to leave behind memories of the Dominican Republic. However, life in New York City has gradually proved to change the perspectives or thoughts that her family has towards life positively. They have had trouble trying to adjust to New York City life and customs, but they were eventually able to get used to it.
