The childless couple helped Carlos secure the fellowship that brought him to the United States, and are now working to find him gainful employment. The final chapter of this section, "Floor Show," takes place at a Spanish restaurant in New York, where the Garcías are being treated to a welcome dinner by a prominent American doctor and his wife. The brief ninth chapter, "Snow," is about Yolanda's first snowfall, which she mistakes for the radioactive dust she has been warned will fall in an atomic explosion. In "Trespass," Carla recalls a traumatic encounter with a pervert on her walk home from school, where she is regularly bullied by racist boys. Her initial attempt at a rebellious speech, inspired by Whitman, enrages her conservative father. Yolanda begins to write poems in her new language, and she is asked to deliver an address for a teacher appreciation day in ninth grade. Her mother spends hours inventing improved devices, until one day she discovers that her idea for a rolling suitcase has just been patented by someone else. "Daughter of Invention" relates how Yolanda and her mother simultaneously search for creative outlets and personal growth as they begin adapting to their new culture. They scheme to split up her relationship with her tyrannically misogynistic cousin, Manuel Gustavo. When the family visits her a few months later, the sisters are shocked at how thoroughly she has absorbed Dominican culture, including its emphasis on dolled-up femininity and strutting machismo. When their mother discovers a baggy of marijuana in their house, Sofía claims it as hers and agrees to spend a year in the Dominican Republic. Chapter 6, "A Regular Revolution," describes how quickly the girls adjust to the freedoms of teenage life in the States after their initial discomfort. Part 2 takes place between 19 and centers on the family's experience as recent immigrants to the United States. The last chapter of Part 1, "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story," tells the story of Yolanda's first serious relationship and her trouble integrating during her first year at a co-ed college. Chapter 3, "The Four Girls," relates stories told about each girl by their mother in different situations, demonstrating how storytelling binds the family together through a shared history. This chapter focuses on the free-spirited Sofía as she plans a 70th birthday party for her father, from whom she has been estranged since she eloped six years ago. Chapter 2, "The Kiss," brings the other three sisters into the picture and establishes their close relationship to each other and the difficulty they have had reconciling their American brand of feminism and sexual liberation with their parents' conservatism. In the first chapter, "Antojos," Yolanda visits her family in Dominican Republic as an adult and interacts with people from high and low social classes. Part 1 begins with the adult lives of the sisters between 19. The novel is structured episodically as a series of interrelated stories told in reverse chronological order.
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