Hang on to your seats, Shmoopers: that dizziness you're experiencing is the perfectly natural result of jumping back in time. We've skipped a couple of years, but hey—nothing important happened in 1971, anyway? Besides, you know, Disney World, floppy discs, desegregation, and Bangladesh. And a few other things.
Are you ready to dive into the swingin' sixties? Backwards? Here we go:
A Regular Revolution (Carla, Sandra, Yoyo, Fifi)
- At first the family's stay in the United States is meant to be temporary. But when Papi goes back to the Dominican Republic on a "trial visit," a revolution breaks out (2.1.1).
- So it looks like the family will be staying in the U.S. The four girls are not. happy.
- Back in the DR, they had all the best that money could buy—servants, cars, expensive clothes, fancy toys. Here in the U.S. they have to wear second-hand clothes and live in rented houses in the middle of suburbia. Ugh.
- Then "a few weird things happen." Carla is stalked by a pervert, the kids at school start using racist slurs, and Mami finds out that Sandi used a tampon. Two of these things are really awful. The third is only really awful if you're Mami.
- So Mami and Papi send the girls to prep school, to meet the "right kind" of Americans (2.1.5).
- Boarding school is a lot better than suburbia. There are football games. And dances. And boys.
- Wouldn't you know it, as soon as the girls start having a good time in the U.S., Mami and Papi decide they're becoming too American.
- That's it. Summer vacation on the Island, with the familia, from now on.
- So the girls develop an underground system to keep each other out of trouble. On Friday or Saturday nights, one girl would take a turn being "on duty." That means she had to stay home to field Mami and Papi's phone calls while the other girls were out on dates.
- Of course, the "on duty" daughter didn't tell her parents that her sisters were out on dates. Instead, she'd say they were in the library. Studying.
- But sometimes, despite their best efforts, the girls got in trouble anyway.
- The night before the four girls go back to the Island for the summer, the girls are packing. They make fun of their aunts, cousins, and uncles to make themselves feel better.
- Fifi holds up a baggy of marijuana and asks her sisters for advice: should she try to take it to the Island?
- The sisters are debating whether they could get away with smuggling the marijuana through customs, when Mami comes back into the room. Quick—hide the pot.
- Fifi throws the baggy behind a bookcase and forgets about it. We have a bad feeling about this...
- Three weeks later, Mami makes an emergency trip to the Island to interrogate her daughters about the marijuana.
- Surprisingly, Fifi steps up and takes the blame. The other girls try to claim shared responsibility, but Fifi denies their involvement. It's all hers.
- Okay, but here comes an even bigger surprise—Mami decides to keep the news of Fifi's pot smoking from Papi.
- Mami doesn't want Papi to find out about this and send everyone back to the Dominican Republic for keeps. That's 'cause she's got "her own little revolution brewing" (2.1.43). She's been taking business classes.
- As punishment, Fifi has to stay with Tía Carmen on the Island for a whole year.
- By Christmas, Fifi's sisters are dying to see how she's getting on. When they go to visit, Fifi's had a makeover. She looks like a model.
- She's also dating someone... their illegitimate cousin, Manuel Gustavo.
- The sisters decide Manuel Gustavo is their favorite cousin. At first they flirt with him and wait on him hand and foot. It's like they've forgotten all about life in the States and feminism.
- But when Fifi starts to get jealous, the girls cool it with Manuel Gustavo. And they start to notice some things about him that they don't like. Like the way he tells Fifi what to do all the time. And how he won't let her talk to another man, or leave the house without his permission.
- One day Manuel Gustavo yells at Fifi for reading a book.
- So, the three sisters sit M.G. down for a talk. Time to teach him a thing or two about women's rights. It doesn't go so well.
- Fifi is worried that she and M.G. are getting close to having sex, and she doesn't have any access to contraception. M.G. won't use a condom, because he thinks "it might cause impotence" (2.1.93).
- Insert sigh of exasperation here.
- If Fifi gets pregnant, she'll be forced to marry M.G. And then she'd be stuck in the Dominican Republic forever.
- One night, out on the town, cousin Mundín thinks it'll be funny to take the girls to a "motel." Only it turns out not to be a "motel" so much as a "brothel."
- On the way home, the girls see M.G.'s car pulling into the motel. Fifi and M.G. are here, and that can only mean one thing...
- It's time for an intervention. Or better yet... a revolution.
- Here's how it works: Normally, all the cousins cover for Fifi and M.G. when they want to go off alone to hook up. But not this time.
- On Saturday night, the girls force their cousin Mundín to take them back to the house early. Before Fifi and M.G. have gotten back. That means the grown-ups will know Fifi and M.G. are out without a chaperone.
- When they get back to the house, Mami loses it. That's it—Fifi is coming back to the States. No objections.
- Of course, that's what the sisters intended all along. Clever girls.
- But just as they're savoring their moment of triumph and liberation from the Island with its oppressive, sexist ways, Tía Carmen gives them a big hug and tells them she'll miss them. Aw, shucks. Now they feel bad.
- When Fifi comes home, she gets a lecture. And she is mad. She calls her sisters "traitors" (2.1.155).
- But the sisters know they have helped Fifi. They won't let her hide on the Island just because she's afraid "of her own life" (2.1.157). She has her whole life in front of her.