Yolanda had returned to the Dominican Republic after being away for more than five years. Her aunts and cousins didn't know that Yolanda was intending to stay, and not return to the United States. While Yolanda was grateful to be back home in her native country, she also felt very out of place. She knew she would be judged by her aunts and cousins for the way she looked. She dressed very differently than her Dominican relatives. Where Yolanda was more natural and informal in her appearance, her Dominican female cousins colored their hair and wore designer clothes. To Yolanda, her cousins looked like “call- girls." Yolanda no longer seems to feel the same way about the hired help as her family does either. She notices how poorly the help is treated and feels sorry for them. This feeling of empathy comes from her many years in the United States, and isn't what’s expected of a Dominican woman. Yolanda left the Dominican Republic as a small child and hoped to return to what she remembered, perhaps because she didn't quite fit into the American culture. Upon returning home, she realizes that she might not fit into the Dominican culture she once knew either. Her views have changed in the many years she’s been in the United States. When her car breaks down and two men approach her, she is unable to speak anything but English...it makes her feel safer. She had remembered what her aunts had told her about the bad things that have been happening and she was frightened by the Dominican men. Her inability to communicate in Spanish but instead revert to back to English shows how hard it will be for Yolanda to reconnect with her Dominican culture. Yolanda, like her sisters, had her share of troubles with men, “wrong turns” she had called them. The end of her marriage to John eventually sent her into a downward spiral which landed her in a mental hospital. John had called her crazy and gave her nicknames she didn't like. He didn't understand her Dominican culture and she no longer trusted him with her heart to the point where all she heard was “babble, babble, babble." Words were very important to Yolanda for she once considered herself a poet. Yolanda’s problems with men, specifically American men, can be traced back to her early childhood. It was instilled in her at a young age that good Dominican women don't sleep around, “I don't want loose women in my family," her Papi would say. As a Dominican girl, she wasn't taught about sex like the boys were. She couldn't understand why she wouldn't just sleep with a man; everyone was doing it back then. She claimed to be a “lapsed Catholic” who was “pretty well Americanized” by the time she entered college, but she couldn't keep men interested in her because she wouldn't sleep with them. She knew sex as a commitment she would make to a man she loved, but she felt trapped...trapped between an American culture she feels is too lenient towards sex and a Dominican culture that is too overbearing. To Yolanda, being American means being safe; being safe within the language that she felt more familiar with and feeling safe with others, but at the same time feeling lost; lost between the culture she grew up in and the culture she wants to reintegrate with. Sofia, the youngest of the “four girls”, seems to embrace the American culture the best or the fastest if not just out of pure defiance toward her father. Sofia was very young when her family left the island and only remembers what her sisters tell her. She was more Americanized than her three sisters which mostly had to do with the way her father treated her. Sofia felt stifled by her father’s views on sexuality and how women should act. Sofia had dated a Dominican boy for a short time. After they were able to sex they realized it wasn’t what they really wanted. Shortly after, within days, Sofia met Otto whom she would eventually marry. Her father found the love letters Otto had sent to Sofia. This event strained Sofia’s relationship with her father. She would run away from home, marry Otto, and stick it to her father. Sofia accepted the sexual culture of Americans better than her sisters. Sofia tries to resolve her differences with her father, but not until the birth of her children does he agree to see her. Her father visited her in Michigan after the birth of her daughter, but their meeting was cold and her father was very distant. He had not forgiven Sofia yet for running away from home and she had not completely forgiven him for going through her things and reading her letters. The diff