How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
[…] [S]he had seen me through several whippings, an arm broken by a dare jump off Tío Enrique's toolshed, puberty, and my first lie. (1)
The narrator rattles off a list of difficulties she's experienced in her fourteen years, and several of them are "whippings," we assume applied by her father. Because she includes the pain of those beatings in a list along with her broken arm and puberty, it seems as though they're just part of growing up.
Quote #2
So I began keeping a piece of jagged brick in my sock to bash my sisters or anyone who called me bull hands. Once, while we all sat in the bedroom, I hit Teresa on the forehead, right above her eyebrow and she ran to Amá with her mouth open, her hand over her eye while blood seeped between her fingers. I was used to the whippings by then. (2)
The narrator could be a character from Orange is the New Black with these prison-revenge tactics. But nope, she's not behind bars—she's in her childhood home. The fact that these girls treat each other so monstrously is kind of shocking; violence just permeates this family.
Quote #3
In the early afternoon Amá would push her hair back, hand me my sweater and shoes, and tell me to go to Mama Luna's. This was to avoid another fight and another whipping, I knew. (4)
The narrator's mother is at a loss when it comes to dealing with her rebellious daughter. Trouble is, they're locked in a vicious circle: The narrator hits her sisters, which gets her a whipping from her dad, which makes her even more rebellious. Amá tries to break the cycle by removing the narrator, but we're not sure she's actually the problematic element here.