The Speaker/Sister

The sister is the speaker and primary point-of-view character for much of the collection, although it is impossible to tell exactly how much. It is left ambiguous whether the sister-speaker is also supposed to be Diaz herself. There are many first-person point of view poems, for example, that do not deal directly with the brother's addiction or the siblings' parents. In this way, Diaz creates a semi-autobiographical speaker who floats in and out of the collection.

The speaker loves her brother, but by the time she introduces her family in the opening poem, she has already lived through many trying experiences in dealing with his addiction. The way she talks about him is at times bitter and accusing. Later in the collection, the speaker talks about a romance she has with a white woman with the same kind of ambivalence. The speaker loves her lover, but...