Identity

At the start of the novel, the author uses her unnamed first person narrator’s graduation from high school in order to launch her thematic explorations concerning identity. Because the narrator is just 18 years old in Chapter 1, she is at a crucial crossroads in her life. Having just finished high school, the narrator plans “to do two years at Valley College and transfer to UCLA” (4). In spite of these goals for her future, the narrator’s celebratory night out at Salvation soon reveals how little she in fact knows herself. While Debbie wears “her body like she own[s] it,” for example, the narrator carries herself in the opposite manner (4). While Debbie is “so alive it [is] scary,” the narrator admits that “Being a person didn’t come naturally to me the way it seemed to for others” (6). Because she is awed by people who are...