Quinceañera Meaning

In the poem Quinceañera by Judith Ortiz Cofer, the speaker shows the audience that some girl may have the same feels of the transformation from girlhood to womanhood. She is putting the perspective of a fifteen year old girl to tell her true feeling of starting to become a woman. In Hispanic cultures, Quinceañera (meaning sweet fifteen) is a special day that a girl has a party to transform from a child into a young woman.
The first three lines of the poem give the impression that the girl isn’t ready to be a woman. The speaker states, “My dolls have been put away like dead children in a chest I will carry with me when I marry” (1-3) which means that she is too old to be playing with her dolls that are going in a chest, however, she is not ready to give up her “children” (dolls). Also, the dolls represent the childhood she isn’t ready to give up. In lines four through six shows that she is still young and innocent. The reference to the “satin slip” suggests she feels like playing dress up. She gives the reader various negative images and words. For example, “my hair has been nailed back with my mother’s black hairpins to my skull” (6-8). These images seem to be darkness and unhappiness. The speaker explains to the reader the changes she must go through at fifteen. For instance, changes such as simply giving up her possessions to actually doing things in preparation for getting married. In lines eleven to eighteen she feels the idea of first menstruation is a shameful act when she talks about the “blood” in battles and Christ’s hands. She becomes unhappy, by having to do her own laundry because with adulthood comes more …show more content…
This is the age of confusion in a girl’s life and the speaker knows that she must go through these changes, but she doesn’t feel ready to do