Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses sexual assault.

Yolanda Garcia is the second-youngest Garcia daughter and serves as the primary protagonist, although all four sisters play a central role in the story. As Alvarez was herself the second youngest of four sisters, Yolanda, the writer, serves as an avatar of the author to a degree. Yolanda’s role stands out more than the other sisters, and her stories are often told from the first-person point of view.

Yolanda’s story is brought furthest into the future, as at the beginning of the novel, she has returned to the Dominican Republic in what will possibly be a permanent move. When she is on the Island, she notices the differences between herself and her family who stayed in the country, wrestling to reconcile the freedom she experienced in the United States with the comfort of tradition in the Dominican Republic. As the beginning of the novel shows, Yolanda has not made it through her life or her immigration experience unscathed, and her desire to return to the Dominican Republic for good suggests that she has not managed to find a place in the United States that serves all of her needs.