Women, Sex, and Power Theme Analysis

Though much of Negi's coming of age is linked to her physical development and the responsibilities she's asked to shoulder since she's the oldest child, Negi's developing understanding of sex and the female experience deserves special consideration. Her world is one in which there are clear differences between men and women, and also between the roles they're expected to play in society. She's also acutely aware that there's a double standard when it comes to sex, and that sex is, more than anything, a power struggle between men and women.

Negi learns at a young age that there's only one type of man: the sinverguënza, or shameless sexual being. Women, however, are divided into several categories: longsuffering wives, future wives, jamona (spinsters), and the scorned "putas" (whores, either in the literal sense of prostitution or as used in the derogatory sense). Though Papi is regularly referred to as a sinverguënza, it isn't until Negi is much older that she has any real problem with his constant absences to see other women. Further, as a young child, Negi is led to believe that her neighborhood is made up of only wives and future wives—she's told that Macún has no putas, though this is almost certainly not the case. As a result, Negi nurses a secret desire to see a puta in real life so she can understand better how their power over men works. She's led to believe that "bad" women have a vast amount power over men, while women like Mami and her other adult female neighbors are helpless to keep their husbands from leaving them for these other women.

As Negi gets older, she naturally becomes very curious about sex and has her first sexual experiences with a neighbor boy, Tato. Though Negi and Tato initially consensually engage in viewing each other's genitals, when Negi decides she's had enough, Tato tries to forcibly touch her. This is the first time that Negi is made personally aware of the power dynamic involved in sexual relationships. It’s made very clear to her that as a female, she has something that men want, and she's responsible for keeping it from them. This lesson continues when Gloria, the neighbor woman who cares for Negi and her siblings, explains menstruation and where babies come from. Though Negi had seen animals have sex and give birth before, she'd never connected what she'd seen to the possibility of human sex. Notably, when Negi makes this connection, she phrases it in terms of power: in her understanding, sex is something that men do to women, not something that men and women agree to. Not long after making this connection, Negi begins to feel less warmly towards Papi. Though she was previously able to love her father despite knowing he's a sinverguënza, her new understanding of sex makes it difficult for her to see him as a loving person when she thinks she understands what goes on in private between her parents (it's important to note, however, that though Negi's understanding of sex is connected to power and fear, there's never any indication that Papi and Mami's sexual relationship is anything but consensual).

What follows throughout the rest of the memoir are highly uncomfortable sexual experiences in which Negi is catcalled, groped, or otherwise made to feel uncomfortable by the men around her. She struggles to reconcile her changing pubescent body with the unwanted male attention she receives because of it. What Negi deems her first true sexual experience is extremely confusing for her, and rightly so: she did nothing to attract the attention of a man sitting in a truck watching her and masturbating, yet Negi understands that he seemed to enjoy the experience anyway. This final sexual experience of the memoir leaves Negi's sexual development in a precarious place, as she struggles to understand how she can protect her body from men who want to use her body for their own pleasure, even when there's a great deal of physical distance between them. This offers the final, chilling note that Negi isn't really in control of her sexual body. Though Negi knows that she does have the power to seduce men, at least in theory, she understands that her power is minimal compared to that of the men around her.