“I picked up the bag and without taking my eyes off my father, said, “I will never forgive you.” Then I packed some of our clothes and schoolbooks and walked out.” (Diaz, pg. 103)
The second section of our reading deals a lot with the sheer instability that came with the family beginning to break apart. With Papi having finally left Mami, and living separately, Mami fell into the beginnings of schizophrenia and began to lose her mind. She became addicted to hard drugs herself and was homeless a lot of the time. She would even taken Jaquira and Anthony with her to live in dangerous neighborhoods in extremely unstable housing, and would lash out and attack anyone who dared challenge her, but particularly her own kids.
Her father and grandmother simply watched. Her father simply passively encouraged the kids to take the pain and try to avoid “awaking the monster” so to speak, instead of taking responsibility for his kids and making sure their mother stayed the hell away. Their grandmother was simply too old to be able to fight back against Mami, and could only watch the abuse happen right before her eyes.
The instability in this environment can lead to the children themselves eventually developing mental illness. Diaz herself remarks this on page 96 – that mental illness runs in her family and this sort of behavior could potentially be her one day. She simply tried her best to just survive the torrent of rage from her mother. I think this particular comment brings up a very useful discussion. The cycle of abuse, the cycle of mental illness – how much of a child’s future is determined by nature vs nurture? What do you think?
My own family struggles with a cyclical line of mental illness / neurodiversity. On my mother’s side, bipolar I runs heavily and I am extremely lucky to have avoided it, as it is so strong that my own family has dealt with psychotic episodes and hospitalizations. I grew up surrounded by this instability, and just like Diaz I knew it could one day be me but I tried my best to avoid it as much as possible, to minimize my exposure, and to hide away as best I could. I didn’t come out perfect, but I think I managed alright – I will definitely need to think over and examine my childhood for the rest of my life. I’ll have to examine little bits of behavior here and there that I might have thought normal but in actuality were just elements of my family’s own illnesses. What can I do to prevent this from ever happening again, should I adopt kids? Diaz herself states that she has no idea whether her mother’s mental illness was caused by her mother’s collective trauma throughout her life, or whether it was simply lying dormant in her genetics. We can clearly see that up to this point she was quite unstable before. The answer will never be clear and it is just something Diaz will have to watch for the rest of her life.
I think Jaquira is very strong and lucky to have survived this environment and come out on top as a successful writer in a loving, healthy relationship. She is an example of a success story of having broken the cycle. I hope to maybe do my own research and see if she has written anything about her recovery process later in her life beyond the documentation of her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, and see what I can learn from that.
Díaz Jaquira. (2019). Ordinary girls: A memoir. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Hi Spencer,
I really enjoyed reading your response. I liked that you included yourself in the response and connected your life story to Jaquira’s. To answer your question of “how much of a child’s future is determined by nature vs nurture?”, I think a child’s future is mostly determined by the environment because yes genetics is also a very important part of our upbringing, but as we grow, we get exposed to many things and learn from them. Like how you said you grew up surrounded family with mental illnesses, you would try your best to avoid it or to try and minimize your exposure. To avoid it, you would try to do other things, or surround yourself with things or people that you think would help you avoid it. I would say that genetics does play a role in a child’s upbringing, but that can be changed if you are in a environment that helps you.