Dominicana

The final chapters in Dominicana use plot twists and character development to portray Cruz’s most prominent themes.

The first important development is the relationship between César and Ana. Ana’s attraction to César first develops into a trusting friendship, then a passionate love affair when Juan leaves for Santo Domingo. In César, Ana sees a kind man who treats her with respect and affection. César and Ana make excellent partners. César helps Ana create her own business, while Ana helps him learn and practice hemming. They support one another’s career ambitions but push each other to think bigger. Ana believes that César’s potential is endless, something César doesn’t recognize in himself. As the youngest brother of the strong Ruiz clan, César is still discovering his interests and goals; as a woman, Ana has been trained to think of her goals in terms of family. Ana is better attuned to being a support system, which is what César needs to self-actualize. In turn, César provides Ana with an ally, friend, and lover. He nurses her loneliness and shows her the life available to her in New York City. César does for Ana what Juan cannot, but their relationship is doomed by nonnegotiable barriers.

The likelihood that Ana would end up leaving Juan was always slim, even when she and César were at their happiest. Their ties to their family are too close to allow for disruptions to the status quo. These ties are both cultural and based in the immigrant experience. In the Dominican Republic, César and Ana are raised in conservative, patriarchal households that depend on the work and subservience of women. These expectations are mirrored in the Dominican diaspora; Ana is expected to clean, cook, and bear children while Juan is expected to provide financial security, protection, and leadership for his family. This creates an unequal power dynamic in which Juan controls what Ana can or cannot do. Though César doesn’t act towards Ana with the same level of machismo, he has more autonomy over his actions. No one finds it odd, for example, when César doesn’t come home for days or moves to Boston on a whim. This privilege is unique to a man’s reality, and César is unable to empathize what Ana will be sacrificing if she did run away with him.

The impossibility of a future together is also connected to César and Ana’s immigrant status. In the Dominican Republic, both César and Ana have extended family deeply enmeshed in the community. By contrast, all Ana has in New York is Juan and his brothers. A new country, language, and culture is difficult enough to navigate with this meager support system. If Ana were to leave with César, they would both be giving up their safety net, even if that safety net is linked with Juan’s violent outbursts.

Though Ana and César do not end up together, their relationship is significant to Ana’s character development. César helps Ana set up her financial independence, but he also shows her how to dive into city life. He shows her that going out and engaging with the world is not as scary as Juan would have her believe. With his help and attention, Ana becomes more confident in her abilities to navigate the new world around her. What’s more, their love gives Ana a taste of happiness that she will never have with Juan. In Part 1, Ana’s sister Teresa foreshadowed that one day, Ana would understand Teresa’s irrational behavior in the context of her love for her boyfriend. Sure enough, Ana discovers how love can be a motivating force. Ana and César’s weeks of passion evoke the adage that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Because of this relationship, Ana is better able to contextualize her marriage to Juan. Seeing her situation with clear eyes allows her to become more assertive and to bring her perspective to bear on the mutual compromise of their marriage.

Ultimately, Ana senses that despite his potential, César may be as flighty and impulsive as the other men in her life. She comes to the realization that she cannot trust César to ensure that she and her daughter will be provided for. Thus, César becomes yet another disappointment in Ana’s life, though it was nevertheless meaningful.

Another plot twist in these chapters is the tragic death of Ana’s 16-year-old brother Yohnny. Yohnny lives as a memory in Ana’s heart; his laughter and sharp sense of joy were memories with a ghostly presence, even before his death. His passing marks a new chapter for Ana. She learns to appreciate the life she is given and live it to the fullest because Yohnny is not given the same opportunity. In mourning Yohnny, Ana finds her own voice and potential. Yohnny’s death is symbolic of the senseless violence that characterizes the civil unrest in the Dominican Republic, which further emphasizes how important it is that Ana figure out a way to make her life in America work out. Yohnny’s death highlights the fragility of life and the necessity to live for the future. Though she remains homesick, Ana understands that she will never be able to return to the days of laughter with Yohnny by her side; she cannot go home again.

A third plot twist is the arrival of Mamá and Lenny. Lenny represents the hopes of the entire Ruiz-Canción family. He will learn more about America than Juan or Ana can, by virtue of his age. Through Lenny, everyone will be able to better navigate American systems and cultures. But Mamá’s arrival is more complicated, a double-edged sword. Ana will have the strength of her mother with her, but Mamá is also controlling, has a temper that resembles Juan’s, and is highly critical. Mamá’s move to America threatens to disrupt Ana’s blossoming autonomy. However, Mamá ends up being a strong ally to Ana when Juan slaps her and opens her stitches. Much of the conflict between Ana and Mamá is based on Mamá’s misunderstanding of what Ana has been living through. Far from a glamorous American life, Mamá discovers that Ana has been living with abuse and isolation. Juan is not the God-like provider the Canción family had believed him to be. Furthermore, Ana is more accustomed to American life than her mother, which leads to a role reversal. In moving to America, Mamá comes to Ana’s territory. Elevators and city sounds frighten Mamá, putting Ana in charge of Mamá’s adaptation. This conflict is profound but leads to a solidifying of their relationship. By the end of the novel, they share a mutual respect based on motherhood and female perseverance in a patriarchal society.

The historical context of the novel is important in these chapters. The Dominicans in this novel are living in a diaspora that coincides with the turbulence of the political and social movements of the 1960s. By the mid-1960s, the toll of the Vietnam War on the American psyche lead to widespread disaffection, anger, and demonstrations. Americans critically analyzed their values and culture in the face of a brutal, costly, and increasingly senseless war. Concurrently, the assassinations of major civil rights leaders such as Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. highlighted the deep fissures in American race relations. This is evident in the Ruiz brothers’ perspectives of the anti-police protests that explode in their neighborhoods. To the Ruiz brothers, who are on a lower rung of American society, the rioting in Black neighborhoods appears unlawfully violent and ridiculous. Their beliefs that they are better than Black Americans show that they are internalizing white America’s racist narratives. The Ruiz brothers prefer to ignore disparities in education, health care, employment, voting rights, and economic access that prompt the Civil Rights movement and its connection to street protests. Ana, sequestered in her apartment and victimized by men who try to control her, has more empathy for the protestors.

Cruz develops a feminist theme by showing how Ana develops her own voice. Though Ana continues to live in relation to Juan, she learns ways to assert her own power and reappropriates her role as homemaker. Ana learns how to do this by observing her mother, and in discovering how Marisela, whom she had idolized, fails their sisterhood. Ana is influenced by the other women in her life, but ultimately, she is the one who forges her own path. Giving birth to a girl symbolizes that Ana’s burgeoning feminism will live on through Altagracia. Ana had no choice but to marry Juan, but Altagracia will have more choices and freedoms. Juan wanted the baby to a boy but is thwarted; he cannot control everything. Ana’s child emphasizes Cruz’s point that the female body is a space of strength and dignity.  

The novel ends with a final push back against Juan. Ana shops at Alex the Puerto Rican’s bodega, a store Juan explicitly forbade her from entering. Ana doesn’t give the trip a second thought, highlighting how Ana has freed her own mind from Juan’s control. Though it is a small gesture, it foreshadows that Ana will achieve her dreams of creating an ambitious and happy life for herself and for her family.