Lesson Plan
Ask students to identify the statement or quote from each chapter that had the most impact for them while reading. If your class needs a point of focus for each chapter, you might provide a list for students to analyze after reading. This works well as a homework assignment or in class after reading each chapter. In an AP class, students may read as many as eight chapters in one assignment, so this discussion could follow each reading. One to two class periods of discussion is recommended to cover the topics listed below.
Some suggested topics for discussion or response writing:
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Prologue
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How to Eat a Guava
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“But this is autumn in New York. And I am not longer a child.”
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“I was puzzled by the hypocrisy of celebrating a people everyone looked down on. p13
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“I started school in the middle of the hurricane season, and the world grew suddenly bigger, a vast place full of other adults and children whose lives were similar, but whose shadings I couldn’t really explore out of respect and dignidad.” p30
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Chapter 3
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Someone is Coming to Take Your Lap
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“The rise and fall of their words sounded like a promise.” p45
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Chapter 4
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The American Invasion of Macun
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“There were no fathers. Most of them worked seven days a week, and anyway, children and food were woman’s work.” p64
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Chapter 5
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Why Women Remain Jamona
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“I dressed to their murmurs in the other room, their voices soft but strained, and I wondered if men even talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences.” p103
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Chapter 6
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Mami Gets a Job
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“I got the message that my mother was breaking a taboo I’d never heard about. The women in the neighborhood turned their backs on her when they saw her coming, or, when they talked to her, they scanned the horizon, as if looking at her would infect them with whatever had made her go out and get a job.” p122
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“She treated me like I had a disease. If I died and never came back to school, she’d probably be happy. But not for long. I’d come back to haunt her.” p150
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Chapter 8
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Letters From New York
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“The jukebox blared the lover’s troubles. His voice cracked a little when he sang that his heart was closed. But no matter how final he meant it to sound, eventually he would forgive his woman and they would go on living, loving and fighting. Just like Mami and Papi.” p155
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“I had wrapped myself in the blanket of responsibility she was about to drop on me. It felt heavy, too big for me, yet if I made the wrong move, I was afraid it would tear, exposing the slight, frightened child inside.” p181
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Chapter 10
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Dreams of a Better Life
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“She was a stone packed inside a shell that wouldn’t crack.” p208
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Chapter 11
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Angels on the Ceiling
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“I felt disloyal for wanting to learn English, for liking pizza, for studying the girls with big hair and trying out their styles at home, locked in the bathroom where no one else could watch.” p230
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Chapter 12
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You Don’t Want to Know
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“There was an extended family . . . . But Mami was too proud to ask them for more than they volunteered, and we were all developing the same stubborn pride, behind which our frightened selves hid, pretending everything was all right.” p254
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“I stood up abruptly, and my chair clattered onto its side two feet from where I stood. I picked it up, wishing with all my strength that a thunderbolt would strike me dead to ashes on the spot.” p264
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Epilogue
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One of These Days
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“I had forgotten the skinny brown girl with the curled hair, wool jumper, and lively hands. But she hadn’t.” p269
