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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Bodega Dreams, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Latinx Immigrants and Broken Dreams
Crime, Wealth and Activism
Religion, Sexism, and Poverty
Loyalty, Solidarity, and Community
Summary
Analysis
Julio explains that Sapo is different: Sapo relies on himself, bites when he fights, and loves himself. Julio wishes he could be as self-reliant as Sapo. Sapo’s real name is Enrique, but he’s always been called Sapo because he looks like a happy, laughing toad. Having a nickname gives you status on the block; People without nicknames get kicked around. Julio wants one too, but he has to fight to earn one.
Quiñonez opens his story by describing the close friendship between narrator Julio and his best friend, Sapo. Although their lives will diverge as the story develops, the loyalty between them remains intact, anchoring the plot. Julio’s talk of nicknames and fighting shows that the environment he’s growing up in is a little rough around the edges.
Themes
Julio thinks it’s easy to fight when you hate yourself—when you live in projects in Spanish Harlem with junkies, rapists, and whores, among burned-down buildings and vacant lots full of decaying stolen cars. Deaths—from shootings, holdups, fires, or overdoses—are normal here. People’s mothers often knock on doors asking people like Julio to commemorate their dead sons with graffiti for a few bucks. Julio knows he has to become one of these guys or spend his time getting beaten up by them.
Julio’s opening description of Spanish Harlem, the story’s setting, shows that it’s a neighborhood riddled with crime, poverty, and drugs. Quiñonez lets the reader know that this is a part of the city that’s deeply disenfranchised and facing a lot of social problems. This is important, as the story’s plot revolves around attempts—both old and new—to improve the neighborhood.
Themes
Julio goes to Junior High School 99—or “Jailhouse 99”—on 100th Street and First Avenue. The white teachers have power and seniority but don’t bother teaching much because they think the kids will all end up as delinquents. The Hispanic teachers don’t have “switchblade tempers” or names like Maria or Anita. They make the kids work hard and try to teach them self-respect, but they have little say in how they school is run. In social science, the students just learn about Italy (even though they hate Italians and avoid their neighborhood). The school was even renamed after Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos, but the kids never learn about people like that. They’re convinced that their own people have no culture—so they hate themselves and look for fights.
Julio’s description of his school shows the systemic oppression that Latinx immigrants face. In mentioning “Maria” and “Anita” (two characters in the movie West Side Story) Julio implies that movies and other media falsely depict Latinx people as unstable and violent (or as people with “switchblade tempers”). Julio also shows that the white teachers with power ignore and undermine Latinx students in their classrooms, and Latinx culture in their curricula, which makes immigrant students feel disillusioned about their own prospects.
Themes
Julio eventually gets over his dislike for hitting people and starts fighting. With Sapo in his corner, Julio earns the nickname Chino, on account of his straight, black, Ecuadorian hair and his almond eyes, which make him look a bit Chinese. Names are a mark of respect; other kids earn names like Indio if they look a bit Caribbean or Batista if they like music but fight well. Most kids at school carry jigas (“knives”) but rarely use them. One kid is famous for using his to slash people’s faces when he fights, leaving ear-to-ear-scars known as Kool Aid smiles, so he’s known as Junior Jiga.
Julio shows that loyalty between friends is an empowering resource for young children in this violent environment: his friendship with Sapo earns him credibility and respect among his peers. The violence Julio mentions implies that Spanish Harlem’s residents are left to fend for themselves by the city’s legislators, who largely turn a blind eye. Julio also shows that children are lured into fighting and street politics to gain respect—something they don’t get from authority figures like their white teachers.
Themes
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Julio explains that Sapo is always himself around everybody, even girls. He even cusses around Nancy Saldivia, whom everybody has a crush on. She’s an angelic girl with tan skin, hazel eyes and brown-blond hair. She’s intelligent, polite, and she always carries a Bible, so everyone calls her Blanca. Blanca hangs around with Lucy, a hairy girl who can’t shave her legs because of her religion. All the guys—except Sapo, who doesn’t care—want to protect Blanca even though they know they won’t get far with her. She almost makes them want to go to church.
Even at a young age, the children fetishize religious girls like Blanca as pure, “angelic,” and in need of protection by men. Later, however, Julio will argue that the Bible’s values (and the churchgoing practices of the community in Spanish Harlem) infuses Latinx people with sexist values that disempower women—particularly by depicting women as people who need to be perpetually saved by men.
Themes
Julio loves the adventures he has with Sapo—like smoking marijuana, making bets, and flying kites with razor blades attached to cut down other kites—even though Julio’s mother doesn’t approve. Julio’s father gets it, though—he doesn’t lose his cool when Julio comes home with a black eye, and he knows it’s good for Julio to have a guy like Sapo watching his back. Reflecting back on that time, Julio knows that Sapo’s friendship was the core of his adolescence. Like Julio’s mother, Blanca (who’s the center of Julio’s adulthood) can’t quite understand this.
The reader learns that Julio and Blanca will eventually end up together, and that their relationship will become strained by Julio’s loyalty to his best friend Sapo. Nonetheless, it’s clear that Sapo’s friendship is essential to Julio—they provide each other with solidarity as they face the violent streets of their youth, and it helps them to avoid becoming demoralized by their surroundings. Sapo’s friendship is thus deeply empowering for Julio despite the friction it causes with others.
Themes
