“Ordinary Girls” is a Book written by Jaquira Diaz, a Puerto Rican woman who deals with hardships with her family and grows up in poverty. In the second section of “Ordinary Girls” Jaquira is trying to help her mother who is constantly doing drugs and smoking cigarettes and not being a mother to her. She also talks about her brother being abusive towards her, and she would stand up for herself by fighting back. Jaquira talks about how mothers are supposed to be loving and caring and always be there for you, but her mother was just hurting her. “We’re supposed to love our mothers, we’re supposed to trust them and need them and miss them when they’re gone. But what if that same person, the one who’s supposed to love you more than anyone else in the world, the one who’s supposed to protect you, is also the one who hurts you the most?” (Diaz 58) She also talks about how her father wouldn’t fight back for them if her mother took them away, or when Jaquira would show bruises from her mother to her father or to even show a sign that he even cared. This shows how her parents are bad role models and are not being supportive, making her life lonely.
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Ordinary girls/ unordinary book
Vulnerability, and humanity. Two key terms that pops up in my head throughout my read of the book. Since this is a memoir of the author you know that there’s a variety of truth to be told but you don’t know how raw that truth will be told. There’s a scene I skipped forward to while initially skimming through the book before my first read where the author, Jaquira Diaz tells us about her experience being pat down with a number of other girls. She and the other girls being searched are seen as nothing more than numbers to be notched. With their dignity and humanity taken away for a moment in the book the author becomes vulnerable to the reader and shows just how taboo her story is. Something that I can’t say the other books have. I am excited to keep reading this book and am excited to talk about it. Its like watching a Netflix show and before a uncensored episode there’s a warning in the beginning for the viewer to have them prepare for something that needs be warned about and those episodes are always the most fun and interesting to watch.
Ordinary Girls session 1
For the very first session of the book club, we were instructed to read until page 62 of Ordinary Girls. These 62 pages include the book’s preface titled ‘Girlhood’ and three-fourths of part one: Motherland. This part of the book is an introduction to readers as Jaquira Diaz introduces characters such her brother,mother,father,and grandmother on both sides of the family. She also sets up her childhood home and the community around it and how everyone there treats each other almost like family (pg 41). Telling the reader this, i feel is important as it really allows for readers of Spanish or Hispanic background to be able to relate to her childhood growing up. For me, coming from a Hispanic background myself, this sort of community was common, everyone who lived in the same apartment or neighbor always looked out for each other. People gave each other food if someone made too much, invited families over for dinner, and even brought all the kids ice cream during a summer day. Seeing Jaquira implement and tell the reader about her community really helps me to connect to the story even more and helps me better picture her childhood in my own eyes. However for the majority of the reading in these first early chapters we see Jaquira Diaz’s relationship with her father and how much she loved him. Very early on we can see why exactly she loves him so much as he taught her things that she’d cherish (pg 24). He was her role model and someone she looked up to for his rich story telling and knowledge of history. While I myself cannot relate to looking up so much to a father figure, it still captives me by how much she wanted to just like him. The reasoning for this is because it gives me insight into a feeling I will never truly relate to myself but allows me a peak at how it feels like to look up to a father figure so much.
Ordinary Girls Analysis Pt.1
Ordinary Girls is a memoir written by Jaquira Diaz, a Puerto Rican women. In this memoir she talks about her experiences growing up and how being a Puerto Rican women has impacted her life. In the beginning of her book, she has an introduction labeled “Girl Hood” and it’s an introduction not about her life specifically but what it means to be a girl and also live as one and the transition into women hood. The first couple of pages (pgs. 10-15) Diaz is reminiscing of the times she spent in Puerto Rico as a child in 1985 and the stories her father told her while her mother was ignoring him and smoking her cigarette and her brother asleep. She also mentions how her mother and father met when Jaquira’s mom was in high school and father in college. Jaquira then goes and introduces “La Otra”, the other women in pages (22-29). La Otra was a their neighbor that was in love with Jaquira’s father and tried to get as much information out of Jaquira about her father. The neighbor would ask her questions regarding her father and his interest and one day even sent him food and when Jaquira’s mom found that out, everything went downhill. “La Otra” had a huge impact on Jaquira’s life because Jaquira witnessed first hand how an outsider ruined her family and parents relationship. Jaquira also saw a side to her father that she never did, her father would lie to Jaquira and her mom and tell her that Jaquira was lying about the encounters he had with the neighbor. Many more real life and eye opening events take place after this one as well that has helped Jaquira Diaz become he women she is now.
“Ordinary Girls” Section 1 Summary
Diaz starts off the first section of her book talking about her family life and dynamic, as well as her childhood in PR. Emphasized in the first few pages is her deep love and adornment for her father, as she wrote on page 13 “But I was sure of one thing: that I wanted everything my father wanted, and if he loved this man, then I would love him, too.” and “I ADORED MY father. He was the center of my universe, and I wanted, more than anything else, to be the center of his” (pg 17).
Like a lot of traditional families, focus is on the sons of the house. Her brother, Anthony was Mami’s, Papi’s and Abuela’s favorite. Contrary to her, he had light eyes and skin, while she was “ brown, brown, brown, like tierra”.
During this section, Diaz also shared the issues her family had to face. Her father had an affair with the neighbor which led to a fight with Mami, and there was a racial tension between Mercy, Mami’s mother, and Diaz’s black father. In fact, Mercy was against her daughter getting with a dark skinned man, even telling Diaz “ it’s your father’s fault. Your father and his black family. Your black grandmother. Your black uncle.” (pg. 45)
She then reminisced about the good times she spent with her family.
Racial Justice Reads
In Fairest, one quote that stood out to me was ¨ Pregnant women were therefore advised not to spend too much time in the sun for fear that their baby would be born a sunchild ¨. I’m not sure if I’m interpreting this correctly, but I made the assumption that the term sunchild is another word for albinism. It seems that it is a part of Talusan´s culture to care deeply about one’s appearance. The simple fact that myths like this exist and are passed down from generation to generation shows that Talusan would face obstacles regarding her looks for the rest of her life. This may give reason to why she doesn’t want her book cover to have anything to do with her looks. She says in ¨The Cover of My Face¨What’s more, one of the greatest luxuries of being an author is that I can separate myself from my physical presence¨(Talusan). Her appearance has been such a huge part of how others perceive her therefore being an author finally gives her the chance to exist outside of her looks and escape the famous myths she’d heard about albinism. In ¨Ordinary Girls¨ one quote that stood out to me was ¨It wasnt the haircut she said chuckling, it was my bad hair. Your fathers fault. Your father and his black family¨ (Diaz). Jaquira seems to be someone whose family plays a large part in her identity. In this moment, her grandmother inflicts negativity on her by making her think her fathers black traits are not beautiful. Even in ¨La Otra¨, she says I knew that these were things meant for girls, and that I was supposed to like them. But I had no interest in my mother’s curtains, or her tubes of red lipstick, or her dresses, or the dolls Grandma Mercy and Titi Sandy sent from Miami¨ (Diaz). Jaquira determines a lot of her identity, what she does like, and what she does not like based on different ideas presented to her by her family. I predict that the theme of self hatred and confusion will show up a lot in this book.One moment that stood out to me from Kiese Laymon’s excerpt of ¨Heavy¨ is the part of the book where his grandmother is wanting him to be sympathetic toward white people during the Rodney King riots. He expresses ¨ I wanted to fairly fight white folk and I wanted to knock them out¨(Laymon). In this moment, he is so hurt that he has become insensitive to White people all in all. This may stem from when he was much younger and he experienced his grandmother working for a white family. He says in ¨Quick Feet¨, ¨Stealing their food felt like the only way to make the rotten feeling in my belly go away¨(Laymon).He wanted so badly for that white family to feel pain and suffering because that was all he knew and he was jealous that he had never seen white people struggle. For this reason, he did not feel pity for white people during the riots because he figured it was what they rightfully deserved. I expect this book to talk a lot about the little things that tell a profound story about the difference between white and blacks living in America. I expect for it to be filled with the author coming to sudden realizations of just how much inequality really exists.
Laymon, Kiese.¨ Quick feet: When Counting to Ten Isn’t Enough ¨. VQRonline. (2018).https://www.vqronline.org/memoir-articles/2018/10/quick-feet
