Blog Post 5 - The Women around Yunior and their Independence

Over the course of the three books, a certain theme is established that is true for almost all of the women involved: from Mami to La Inca and Beli, even to Yunior's exes in This is How You Lose Her, independence and power are more prevalent as time goes on.  Shown in "Aguantando" and "Invierno" is a picture of Mami as changing fundamentally with and without her husband.  Yunior describes the one photograph he sees of her before marriage as being completely different than her image afterwards; the change is more pronounced when one sees her faithfulness and devotion by "barr[ing] the door with her arm while she said good-bye, just to show them that nobody was getting in" (Drown 73).  Despite Papi's affairs, for which he regularly takes Yunior and Rafa along, Mami never wavers.  Regardless of the fact that the boys are smacked around regularly, her children bind her to Papi.

However, both elements must be present for a woman to be so dependent on a man, as shown by La Inca and Beli.  In La Inca's case, after the death of her husband, she mourned for the rest of her life and never loved a man again.  It was through this process that La Inca acquired independence: she found a man, she lost the man, and was free by virtue of never loving again.  While she did end up taking Beli in as a daughter, the fact remains that her independence was not hampered; after all, she owned a chain of very successful bakeries.  La Inca followed suit in a similar manner, only she actually had children before the tragedy struck.  She was bound, for a time, first to the Gangster and then to her husband upon coming to America, but once he left and she vowed never to love, just like La Inca had, she was strong, independent, and able to take care of herself just fine.

Lastly, most of Yunior's exes are relevant to the newly-found power and independence by way of sexual freedom, but a particularly striking example is that of the "young morena from the Harvard Law School," who ends up having a child but the father is uncertain (This Is How You Lose Her 193).  Upon getting pregnant, the woman leaves her current boyfriend so that Yunior can take care of her, using his time, money, and space for the sake of a child he assumes will be his.  However, as soon as she goes into labor, Yunior gets kicked out of her life in favor for the Kenyan, showing how she manipulated Yunior into doing things through her independence and sexual freedom.  These actions indicate a trend of increased power, typically through sex, from women in Yunior's life as time goes on.