Blogpost 24: Free as the Caribbean Wind

This section of the text takes the reader back in time to explore Beli's upbringing and teenage years back in the Dominican Republic. For me, what I found most interesting about this section is how her childhood experiences shape the way she behaves as a parent to Oscar and Lola.

In her earliest years, Beli struggled as an orphan in a harsh foster home. The text does not reveal a whole lot about these years of her life yet, but it implies that it was an extremely rough time for Beli. The absence of a stable parent in her earliest years could explain why she struggles as parent.

However, once out of foster care, most would say Beli was treated very well by La Inca. Interestingly, La Inca was strongly against beating Beli (79), yet Beli beats her children frequently as a parent. Beli treats her children very differently from the way she was treated as a child because she did not respect her relationship with La Inca. She distanced herself more and more from La Inca as she grew up because she wanted to create her own path, which could explain why her parenting style is much different.

Although different, there are many similarities between the mother-daughter dynamics between La Inca and Beli and Beli and Lola. Beli and Lola both grow up having the same burning desire: to escape (57, 80). Yet, both of their mother figures are the main things holding them back from their achieving their one wish. They also both make references to feeling like a slave: Lola says "What it's like to be the perfect Dominican daughter, which is just a nice way of saying a perfect Dominican slave" (56) and Beli refers to herself as a "pagina en blanco," or "blank slave" (78). Both Beli and Lola experience transformations when they decide to stop being perfect Dominican daughters and start acting as the rebellious and strong women they imagine themselves to be. They also both even have fights with their mothers over their hair (59, 80). Hair is often seen to be a symbol of womanhood because it is a key feature of a woman's appearance, and these arguments may symbolize a disagreement between mother and daughter over the way a woman should look and behave to fulfill their role in society.

Beli shares similarities not only with Lola, but with Oscar too. Before hitting puberty, Beli was an outsider at school and had trouble making friends and meeting guys. "She wasn't even lucky enough to be demoted into that lamentable sunset-- those mega-losers that even the losers pick on. She was beyond that, in Sycorax territory" (85). Oscar too struggles with hopeless romanticism and feeling like an outsider. Beli hated being treated that way at school and does not want the same for Oscar, which could explain why she is so hard on him for liking comic books and other things that would label him as "uncool."

I chose this picture to represent Beli because she felt trapped while she was living under the rules of La Inca. She desperately wanted to create her own path but felt powerless--she was just a little girl living under Trujillo's reign afterall. However, once she hit puberty and her breast size grew dramatically, she found she could use her body for power. Even though she did not want to be objectified, she liked it because she felt she finally had some control over her life and over those around her, so she could finally break free and stop feeling like she was living at "bottom of the ocean."