Ancestry

The author explores the ways in which the individual's ancestral past might impact her personal relationships via Fly and Stela's relationships with their families. The author introduces this notion in the opening chapter of the novel, "Love Letter." Written in the epistolary form and from the first person plural perspectives of Fly and Stela's parents, this chapter illustrates the entanglement between the main characters' past and present lives. In the letter, Fly and Stela's parents say that "when you meet your love, you are meeting all the people who ever loved them or who were supposed to love them but didn't love them enough, or, hell, didn't love them at all" (1). This line not only introduces the author's thematic interest in exploring the complex meaning of one's proverbial emotional baggage, but also addresses the narrative form. In the chapters that follow, the author divides the narrative...