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Junior
Luis’s wife, whom he abuses brutally and who falls deep into addiction after Luis goes to jail. This leads Wanda and Luis to lose their children, whom Felix and Candy subsequently adopt. She internalizes blame for Luis’s actions, and suggests that women’s behavior is responsible for men’s abuse in general. However, she later divorces Luis while he is in prison. As of Bourgois’s 2003 Epilogue, Wanda is “exchanging sex for crack under the elevated railroad tracks on Park Avenue.”
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Wanda Character Timeline in In Search of Respect
The timeline below shows where the character Wanda appears in In Search of Respect. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6: Redrawing the Gender Line on the Street
...uses her newfound independence to help other women, like by trying to convince Luis’s wife Wanda to retaliate for his violence—he beats her up whenever she looks out the window. But...
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Epilogue
...who ostensibly no longer beats her, and has adopted two of Luis and his wife Wanda’s children. Felix works occasional construction jobs, but the family still receives welfare (his pay is...
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...from crack while he looks for a place in a treatment program. However, his wife Wanda is divorcing him and living with another man—he wants “to beat both of them up...
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Epilogue 2003
...met six years before, when “his father Luis has just been jailed and his mother [Wanda] is exchanging sex for crack under the elevated railroad tracks on Park Avenue.” Luis’s son...
(full context)
