Cofer discusses the unreliability of memory and how “childhood years are often conveniently consolidated into one perfect summer’s afternoon” (11). She explores this in relation to Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Sketch of the Past,” which suggests that memoirs actually combine memory with imagination to create a “poetic truth” (11). Cofer intends to lean in to this understanding, using her memory only as a starting point to explore her imagination and her emotional attachment to the broad landscape of her childhood. Through this, she hopes to find a greater truth, one that is learned by tracing emotions through memory, imagination, and creation.

Every afternoon, the female members of Cofer’s family gathered in her grandmother’s living room to share stories. Although such sharing appeared to be casual, it served the purpose of educating Cofer and the other girls and young women about what it meant “to be a woman, more specifically, a Puerto Rican woman” (14). As they had for generations, they told “true” stories that were often heavily embellished, as well as cuentos or traditional morality tales.

Cofer’s grandmother, known to everyone as Mamá, liked to tell the story of a woman abandoned at the altar. Cofer remembers first hearing it at around 11 or 12 years old; she pretended to be too absorbed in a comic to listen while Mamá braided her hair.