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43 pages 1 hour read

Judith Ortiz Cofer

Call Me Maria

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | YA | Published in 2004

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Pages 1-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 1-2 Summary: “Poesia” and “Call Me María”

In the epigraph to the novel, Ortíz Cofer includes a quote in English and Spanish by the famous author Pablo Neruda. The quote describes poetry “looking for” the narrator.

The opening pages of the novel serve as an introduction to the protagonist, María, who describes a “beautiful day / even in this barrio” (1). María then goes on to describe her different selves: “María Alegre / who was born on a tropical island” and María Triste, who is her sadder self in New York City (1). The poem concludes with María saying that she is neither her Alegre nor her Triste self.

Page 3 Summary: “Like the First Flower”

In New York City, María lives in a basement apartment from which she can watch the street. Her mother is still in Puerto Rico, and María describes her time spent alone while her father is working. She has a hopeful tone, describing how she will break through the “surface” eventually (3).

Pages 4-5 Summary: “Letter to Mami”

As María adjusts to her new life, she writes a letter to her mother that reflects on her new school, which “looks like a prison” (4). She tells her mother how much she misses the Island and concludes by asking Mami not to forget her.

Pages 6-9 Summary: “Scenes From My Island Past Part One”

In “Scenes From My Island Past,” María describes stories from her childhood. In Part One, she describes her life with Mamí in their small concrete cabin. This first story describes María wanting to dance with her mother, who seems tired and is stressed by the fact that Papi is sick.

After making breakfast and washing the dishes, Mami talks with María about what will happen because of Papi’s tristeza (sadness), which is making him sick. María gets her mother to dance the mambo to make her feel better.

Pages 10-12 Summary: “Scenes From My Island Past Part Two”

María describes another time in which she danced with her mother. While Papi’s sadness lingers in the background of their lives, María always enjoys dancing with her mother. After a happy dance, they transition to a slower dance, and Mami begins preparing María for Papi’s return after being sick.

Pages 13-14 Summary: “Scenes From My Island Past Part Three”

Over time, Papi’s depression worsens, and he and Mami make the difficult decision for him to return to New York. María watches the conflict unfold and decides that she will go with Papi to “explore a new world” (14) in New York.

Pages 15-16 Summary: “Where I Am Now: The Tide, the Treasure, and the Trash”

María describes her new setting in New York City in a verse poem. She describes the different people in her neighborhood as “what the tide / brought to the American shore” (15). María includes her father in this depiction and refers to the things she might find on the beach in Puerto Rico.

Page 17 Summary: “Here Comes Barrioman”

María watches as her father becomes more integrated in the lifestyle of New York City and forgets about his connections to his family and his life in Puerto Rico. María calls him the “Barrioman” to illustrate his semi-heroic role in their neighborhood.

Page 18 Summary: “Spanglish for You and Maybe for Me”

As María adapts to her new life, she makes friends with Whoopee Dominguez. Because Whoopee is a Puerto Rican who was born and raised in New York, she primarily speaks in Spanglish. María connects this pattern of language to her father’s and wants to practice her own Spanglish.

Pages 19-20 Summary: “Spanish Class, a Lesson in El Amor”

In school, María takes Spanish classes with a teacher who exoticizes Spanish-speaking countries and cultures. While María remains a student who wants to learn as much as possible, she also finds it ironic that Señorita Stuckey never focuses her stories on the people who live in the places she has only visited.

Pages 1-20 Analysis

The opening sections of Call Me María establish a number of crucial things about María’s perspective and her experiences. Throughout the section titled “Scenes From My Island,” María briefly describes the circumstances that led her to be in New York; these opening narratives also establish a firm groundwork for María’s background, explaining the nature of the split between her parents. The narrative then quickly shifts to María’s attempts to adapt to her new life, making initial observations about school, language, and the people around her. Yet underlying María’s straightforward descriptions of her life experiences is her adolescent understanding of emotion. She refers to both Papi’s depression and her own sadness using similar language, illustrating her lack of nuance in interpreting the intensity of various emotions. While this dynamic marks a common characteristic of a teenager’s perspective, it also serves to establish an aspect of María’s internal landscape that will shift dramatically over the course of the book. As she matures, she will shed her binary thinking and will come to see people’s motivations (including her own) as being influenced by a range of factors.

Another aspect of María’s narration in the beginning of the text is her equal adoration of both parents, a childlike perception that will be challenged as the theme of Complex Relationships With Parents becomes more prominent in the novel’s progression. Initially, however, she describes both Mami and Papi with warmth and reverence, almost as if they are superhuman. Similar to her rudimentary understanding of emotion, this tendency emphasizes yet another aspect of María’s adolescent perspective that will undergo drastic changes as María gains a more nuanced understanding of both parents. In this way, Ortíz Cofer uses María’s first-person narration as a tool to portray these internal experiences just as intensely as the external interactions that María must face.

Even the epigraph of the book is an important feature that highlights the very nature of the novel’s key conflicts. The quote is from Pablo Neruda, a famous Chilean poet whose work is often primarily in Spanish. Ortiz Cofer’s deliberate decision to contrast the original Spanish version with the translated English version is designed to mirror María’s own journey to become a poet who writes in both languages. Additionally, the placement of Neruda’s quote foreshadows that there is an age at which poetry will find María, just as it found Neruda. Significantly, the first section of the novel contains only a few poems, illustrating that María is only on the first part of her journey toward becoming a poet.

As María’s first experiences in New York unfold, it becomes clear that her interest in language dovetails with her interest in poetry. In Señora Stuckey’s Spanish class, for example, María reflects on what her teacher fails to convey about the reality of Spanish-speaking places, observing that “she never tells [them] about the people” (20). María’s observations about her teacher’s biased perspective also reveal her own values; for María, language, place, and people are all critically intertwined. This idea is also reflected in María’s thoughts about Spanglish, which both Whoopee and Papi speak. María describes it as a language that “is like a song you cannot get out of your head” even if it doesn’t entirely make sense (18). Just like English and Spanish, Spanglish is a language that is intimately connected to the people who speak it and the places in which it is spoken.

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