27 pages • 54 minutes read
Julia AlvarezThe Daughter of Invention
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Typewriter
The typewriter in “Daughter of Invention” relates to the theme of Language, Communication, and Writing. Laura first brings up the typewriter when she bursts into Yoyo’s room while she is writing. She claims she’ll buy Yoyo a typewriter and hire her a typist when she makes money from her inventions. A typewriter gives Yoyo’s writing legitimacy and possibility beyond her writing in her room at night. It signifies an investment in Yoyo’s future as a writer, and her parents’ acknowledgment that her success and recognition will likely come from her ability to communicate in English. Yoyo receives a typewriter from Carlos, though, not Laura. Laura stops inventing after being discouraged, and Carlos only gives Yoyo a typewriter after she agrees to change her speech. By the end of the story, the typewriter represents the compromises Yoyo will have to make in America to gain the success she desires.
Newspapers
The newspapers in “Daughter of Invention” relate to both the theme of Language, Communication, and Writing and Historical Memory and Trauma. Carlos chooses to read Spanish newspapers each night to get news from home. Laura, on the other hand, reads the New York Times to learn about Americans. When Carlos reads the papers from the Dominican Republic, he also commits to reading in his native tongue, a practice that his daughters eschew. Reading is a means of understanding, and Carlos wants to continue to understand and hear stories of home, maintaining his bond with where they’ve come from. He imagines returning to the country they’re from, while Laura seeks to understand how to live in the here and now. Laura responds to Carlos’s reading by complaining about how the foreign newspapers get ink all over their bed. Just as Carlos’s memories and trauma from the Dominican Republic stick to him in the form of fear, the ink from these papers stains something new, clean, and possible.
Names
The names the García family calls one another in “Daughter of Invention” expand on the themes of Language, Communication, and Writing and Family Dynamics. Each character is referred to by several names depending upon the context and who is speaking. When moving to a new country and adopting a new language, names can signify the fragmentation of a self. Yolanda goes by Yoyo—“I, I”—which hints at her journey to finding herself and cultivating independence. Laura is called Laura, Mami, or Mom. The girls only call her “Mom” when they want to make her feel like she has “failed them in this country” (237). The ultimate insult to Laura is to give her a new English name for mother, signifying the ways this version of her in America can’t give her daughters everything they ask.
Laura calls “whoever is in her favor” Cuquita (238), a Spanish pet name that expresses great affection. The final name hurled in the story is “Chapita,” which Yoyo knows will hurt Carlos for its association with a dictator he so fears. These and other names used throughout the story connect the characters to parts of their past or present selves, signifying the ways exile to a new country can leave someone with a fragmented identity.
Related Titles
By Julia Alvarez
