Freedom, Identity, and Dissonance Theme Analysis

As a music professor, Yaz teaches her students about John Coltrane’s jazz, specifically his use of “dissonance”—the tension between two things that don’t fit together. Yaz explains that dissonance provides the most freedom to the notes, since they are no longer confined by what came before them, but dissonance also often descends into chaos. Yaz’s commentary on Coltrane’s use of dissonance directly parallels her own life, in which the upper-class academic lifestyle she has made for herself clashes with the poverty experienced by her Puerto Rican extended family, which she was born into. To solve the painful dissonance of her own life, Yaz decides to give up her own freedom and return to taking care of her Puerto Rican family. Through Yaz’s story, the play suggests that individual freedom may be less important than embracing one’s roots and fostering connections with other people.

Yaz leaves behind the the poverty of the barrio—her family’s Puerto Rican neighborhood—to find her freedom and attempt to establish a “normal” life and new identity for herself, illustrating the common desire to be free of one’s constraining circumstances and take on a new identity. Although everyone else in her family and in the barrio remains trapped by its poverty, violence, and hardships, Yaz receives a scholarship for her musical talent and is sent away to an all-white prep school. Looking back, Yaz recalls that being the only Puerto Rican in a rich white prep school made her feel confused about who she was, demonstrating the dissonance of being caught between two different environments and identities. While everyone in the barrio is still in poverty, Yaz goes on to become a recognized composer and a professor at an elite college. To cement her “normal” life and identity, she buys an expensive Steinway piano and marries William, a white man whose family “has Quaker Oats for DNA,” implying that they are both wholesome and bland. The contrast established between Yaz’s new life and the world she was raised in—the world her family still lives in—is stark and increases her feelings of personal dissonance; she herself seems to be made of two things thrust together that don’t quite fit.

The dissonance Yaz feels between her dual identities begins to cause her shame and anxiety, suggesting that although she has found freedom and established a new life, that freedom’s foundation in dissonance is causing it to descend into chaos and noise. Yaz’s family is proud of her success and appreciated her now ex-husband. However, Yaz suspects that her ex-husband secretly sees her Puerto Rican family as “freaks” because of their eccentric cultural traditions and hard lives, and Yaz wonders if she herself began to see her family the same way. Every time Yaz returns home to the barrio to visit family as an adult, her husband remarks that she comes back “different,” and she finds herself guiltily wishing that she could “scoop the [Puerto Rican] blood out [of her] veins.” This demonstrates not only Yaz’s dissonant identity conflict, but also that she wishes to end that dissonance. Although Elliot knows she was working on her career and building her own life, Yaz feels guilty for not having been involved in the barrio or in her family’s lives, for not having helped take care of Mami Ginny—who held the extended family together for decades—while she was dying or supported Elliot when he became addicted to pain killers. Although Yaz’s freedom allowed her to create her the life she wanted, free of her family’s problems and poverty, her guilt suggests that, in her mind, the tradeoff was not worth it.

Yaz ultimately gives up her individual freedom and chooses to embrace who she is and where she came from, suggesting that her freedom is less important than remembering her roots and taking care of the people that she loves. It seems that for Yaz, the freedom was not worth the dissonance. Rather than maintain her “successful” life, Yaz chooses to sell her Steinway piano and use the money to buy Mami Ginny’s broken-down house in the barrio and replace her as the new anchor who holds the family together. This choice again suggests that, although she has tasted the freedom and comfort of defining her own life, Yaz decides that the dissonance is not worth it and chooses instead to embrace who she is and take responsibility for her family. Since Odessa (Haikumom) is now in inpatient treatment for her drug overdose, Yaz even takes over moderating the addiction forum, even though she herself has no addiction history. In the same way that Yaz takes on the responsibility of holding the family together as Mami Ginny once did, Yaz also takes up the role of holding Odessa’s “family” together. This suggests that Yaz’s return to the barrio is more than simply going home; it is a new stage in her life defined by embracing her family’s work, however un-glamorous it may be. It is worth noting that Yaz’s decision to forsake her freedom and her material success in order to resolve the dissonance of her identity is not an absolute value statement—though she assumes that Elliot will go back to the barrio and live with her in Mami Ginny’s house, when he tells her that he is instead going to Hollywood to be an actor and find his freedom as well, she is supportive. However, Yaz pointedly tells Elliot that he will always have a home with her, just in case. Yaz’s response suggests that she understands the need to spread one’s wings and taste freedom. But if Elliot should make the same discovery that she did—that he belongs in the barrio taking care of his people—she will welcome him home.

Yaz’s decision to embrace her family and heritage, messy and poor as it may be, is not an absolute value statement on personal freedom or communal responsibility. It does suggest, however, that it is vital to remember one’s roots and be true to them, not ashamed of them.