What are the motifs in Telling Tales by Migdalia Cruz?

Many of the monologues in Telling Tales explore events and relationships from the narrators' past. The narrators recall the rape and murder of a childhood friend, an ill sibling, an important friendship with an African American girl, an apartment fire that led to the family's move, among other incidents. The narrators spin out their stories from the distance of adulthood. They all live up to the ambition of the narrator of "Parcheesi": "to have a past" and to "tell about it."