How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Sometimes, watching the rabbits in their pens, I'd think, I'm no different from you, poor things. One time, I opened a cage to set a half-grown doe free. I even gave her a slap to get going.
But she wouldn't budge! She was used to her little pen. […]Silly bunny, I thought. You're nothing at all like me. (1.2.3-5)
The rabbit (female rabbits are called does, just like deer—fun fact!) that Minerva tries to release doesn't even want to be free. She's doing it a favor, and it doesn't appreciate it at all. This foreshadows the failed June 14th invasion, when the Cubans and the guerrillas try to "free" the campesinos that just turn against them.
Quote #2
And that's how I got free. I don't mean just going to sleepaway school on a train with a trunkful of new things. I mean in my head after I got to Inmaculada and met Sinita and saw what happened to Lina and realized that I'd just left a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country. (1.2.19)
Minerva believes that becoming aware of the political situation in her country is the same as becoming free. Rather than being a blind little girl, or someone who turns away because they'd rather not know, she opens her eyes and sees the lack of freedom that pervades the entire society.
Quote #3
Three years cooped at home since I'd graduated from Inmaculada, and I was ready to scream with boredom. (2.6.9)
Minerva's lifelong dream is to become a lawyer, but her parents don't support her dream and won't let her move to the capital with her friends to study. She feels like she is throwing her life away, and her desire to scream probably isn't hyperbole. Can you relate?