Juliet Takes a Breath

“I wasn’t ashamed of being in love with the cutest girl on the planet, but my family was my world and my mom was the gravitational pull that kept me stuck to this Earth.”

Juliet feels conflicted about coming out as gay to her family. Although she loves her girlfriend Lainie and isn’t ashamed of their relationship, she also wants to protect her relationship with her family. Juliet especially wants to maintain the strong relationship she has with her mother. This early moment in the novel develops the theme “Women Role Models and Developing One’s Own Values.” 

“Yeah, everyone would probably be white, but white people seemed to totally be okay with gay stuff and just being different in general.”

When getting ready to go to Portland for her internship, Juliet is curious about what life in Portland, Oregon is like since she has spent most of her life in the Bronx. She imagines that most people in Portland are white and therefore she will be more accepted for her gayness there. Juliet believes that white people are more accepting of the queer community than people of color. Juliet’s naivety here both foreshadows that Juliet will face racist behavior in Oregon and also establishes the starting point for her coming-of-age character arc.

“With the windows rolled down, everything floated away into guitar riffs, beat drops, and her asking me the names of newer female musicians. All the weird self-doubt and wheezy feelings in my lungs smoothed over and I felt calm.”

Juliet has a difficult time breathing when she is feeling anxious. When she lands in Portland and meets Harlowe, she is filled with self-doubt. However, this dissipates while listening to music. This is the first moment in the narrative that Rivera connects the air, or lack thereof, to Juliet’s emotions.

“With Mom and Wepa in my heart, Lolita and Sophia in my hands, I decided to be brave and embrace what I came here to find, even though I had no idea what that was.”

Even though Juliet feels apprehensive about the start of her internship with Harlowe, she is inspired to be brave by the powerful women in her life. She knows she needs to overcome her feelings of doubt in order to be a powerful woman, too. She wants to learn more about women so that she can better embrace herself.

“Kids in the Bronx always told me I was too weird or white-acting to be Puerto Rican. Now this Phen dude was telling me that I was too indoctrinated by mainstream society to be down with nakedness. I didn’t even know what to say. Can I live, yo?”

Juliet doesn’t like for her identity to have labels on it, especially since she is still learning what those labels are. She never felt like she fit in at home in the Bronx, so being criticized by Phen (the young man who lives with Harlowe at the beginning of the novel) for being herself frustrates her. Juliet simply wants to live her life and be herself without the expectations of others bearing down on her.

“I sat there breathing all crazy and feeling, demasiado grossed out. How was I supposed to survive here? These Portlanders were an entirely different breed of white people.”

When Juliet gets on the bus for the first time in Portland, she realizes that the white people there are less concerned about hygiene and appearances than they are in the Bronx. She feels disgusted by how they smell, and it’s a new experience for her. Juliet is realizing that not all white people are the same.

“Are you Puerto Rican enough, Juliet Palante? Do you know the words? Are you down with us? Or are you just a white girl with brown skin?”

Juliet feels self-conscious about how she is perceived by others in her own community. Other Puerto Ricans in the Bronx doubt if she is a good enough Puerto Rican because of the way she acts and where she goes to college. This adds to Juliet’s feelings that she doesn’t fit in anywhere.

“I’d been in Portland for less than forty-eight hours and I’d been judged, dismissed, and abandoned. Also, I hadn’t seen one other Latino. No faces like mine; nowhere to breathe easy.”

Portland is a new place for Juliet, and she feels isolated from her friends and family. On top of that, she feels like she is the only Latino in the city and has nobody to turn to for help. Juliet feels like she can’t let her guard down around unfamiliar people. Again, Rivera uses the symbol of air to show Juliet’s stress.

“Watch out for those white girls, okay? Like, what was that? Were we in a scary movie or something? White girls could be annoying, but mostly they were just harmless. Sometimes it was easier to be around white girls anyway; all the things that made me weird in my neighborhood seemed cool to them.” 

Juliet’s cousin Ava tells her to be cautious of white girls. This confuses Juliet because she doesn’t understand what’s wrong with white girls since they seem to be more accepting of her than other people. This foreshadows the conflict in the novel when Harlowe racially stereotypes Juliet.

“Just sitting there watching everyone made me view my people through a whole different lens, like we could be hippies too and that wouldn’t make us any less Black or brown. I could dig that.”

Juliet attends a writers’ workshop for people of color, and this excites her. It is the first time she’s seen many people of color in Portland, and it helps her feel like she belongs there. Juliet is also excited to be around other people of color who have a similar passion for writing.

“You said, ‘We’re the ones that need to give women of color space for their voices,’ Maxine replied, tapping her fingers or the steering wheel. ‘Y’all don’t need to give us anything.’”

Harlowe reprimands other white women and tells them that white people need to give people of color space. Maxine, Harlowe’s partner, finds this offensive because it makes it seem like people of color don’t have the power to make their own spaces, but that instead, white people have to give that power to people of color.

“What did painting women as untrustworthy or whorish have to do with God’s love anyway? Those stories weren’t even about women directly. They were stories about men in which women had side roles as the mother or the second wife or the daughter-for-sale.”

Juliet feels suspicious of the Bible and how it treats women. As a person who believes in God, Juliet doesn’t understand how the Bible can be so hurtful to women. She wants to read more about women who have prominent roles instead of as side roles to men.

“The underbelly of America creeped me out; the sociopathic patriarchy was still some old devil who never got put down.”

Juliet is reading A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and learning more about American history that doesn’t put the US in a positive light. Juliet’s discovery here is part of her coming-of-age character arc, as it causes her to question the “truths” that she has internalized.

“My United States did this to Puerto Rico? The country I pledged allegiance to all through the school, this country where allegedly anyone could just pull themselves up out of poverty and make something of themselves; this country decimated an entire island?”

While learning about the dark history of the US, Juliet learns of the abuse that US has put Puerto Rico through. As someone who is from a Puerto Rican family, this deeply disturbs Juliet and makes her feel silly for not knowing this before. Juliet questions her patriotism and wonders if it is misplaced.

“I was free of self-doubt. No question of whether I deserved this or if this was even my life. No one was yelling at me or trying to make me feel inferior. No one was telling me this was just a phase or that I needed to be better about knowing my history. I wasn’t worried about my mom or my girlfriend or anything.”

Being around librarian Kira makes Juliet happy and carefree. Kira makes Juliet feel like she can be herself and be accepted, something that she doesn’t feel with the other women in her life, even her girlfriend Lainie. Juliet’s lack of self-doubt in this moment helps her love herself more.

“It’s assumed that mothers are the first, but in this world nothing is promised, not even a mother’s love.”

Juliet has had a tumultuous relationship with her mother since coming out as gay before leaving for her summer internship. When Harlowe says these words at her important book reading, Juliet wonders about who the first woman in her life is and whether her mom’s love in infinite. Her mother’s love might not be promised to her.

“What did that poor child raised in the violent ghetto look like? Was that who I was to Harlowe?”

At her important book reading, Harlowe racially stereotypes Juliet as a poor girl from the Bronx. It’s the first time Juliet is seeing herself through Harlowe’s perspective, and it shocks her. This moment causes Juliet to question her earlier belief that white people were more accepting than people of color; she realizes that white people can hold racist beliefs even if they aren’t readily apparent. 

“‘We have three days to love you good,’ Titi Penny said, ‘and discuss the importance of naming racism when it comes for you unexpectedly in the form of a mentor, love, or someone who exists in the gray areas.’”

When Juliet visits her cousin Ava in Miami, she has an important talk with her aunt about what happened when Harlowe was being racist towards Juliet. Her aunt tells her that racism can come as a surprise even from people you are close to.

“It’s okay not to know things, prima.”

Juliet feels a lot of anxiety and struggles to breathe when she is in uncomfortable situations. Her cousin Ava reminds Juliet that she doesn’t always have to be in control and that it’s okay to just let things happen and not understand everything. Juliet must accept that her long-held beliefs may be false in order to grow as a person, and from a technical perspective, develop as a character.

“Ava said Harlowe didn’t make queer and/or trans women of color a priority in her work; that Harlowe assumed that we could all connect through sisterhood, as if sisterhood looked the same for everyone.”

Juliet starts to understand that Harlowe’s perspective as a white woman changes the way she views feminism. Harlowe can’t make women of color a priority in her views on feminism because she is not a woman of color. Feminism and sisterhood can’t be the same for everyone because people are different.

“You are your own person. If liking girls is a phase, so what? If it’s your whole life, who cares? You’re destined to evolve and understand yourself in ways you never imagined before.”

Although Juliet feels stuck in her situation with Harlowe’s racism, she is reminded by her aunt that she is meant to change and learn and grow as a person. She is still young and needs to accept that her life will change.

“Gender-wise alone, it was as if the spectrum of the galaxy, with all its manifestations of human beings, beautifully imploded and all the people here were imbued with its majesty.”

At a queer party with people of color, Juliet experiences being around only queer people of color for the first time. It is a transformative moment for her, and she feels a lot of joy being surrounded by people who accept who they are. She recognizes the beauty in a variety of identities.

“Funny how Harlowe was worshipped among one group of gay people and dismissed by another. How had I been so naïve? How could anything as huge as feminism be universal?”

Juliet’s disillusionment about Harlowe’s feminism has ended and she now realizes that Harlowe’s kind of feminism isn’t mean for women of color. Juliet reflects on how naïve she was to think that a white woman can tell the story of women of color. This realization signals she’s nearing the end of her coming-of-age character arc.