Confetti Girl Analysis

Imagine that you are living a normal, happy life with two wonderful parents who love and care for you, but one day, one of them is gone, just like that. What would your relationship with the remaining parent be like? Would it be weaker? Well, in two excerpts from the stories Confetti Girl by Diana López and Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes, the narrators experience situations like this where the bond with their remaining parent weakens, causing conflict and tension in each of the stories. In Confetti Girl, a young girl misses her mother as her father constantly tries to implement his interests on her. Similarly, in Tortilla Sun a girl argues with her mother about her sudden decision that impacts her daughter’s entire summer and seems unfair.

The conflict begins when the narrator states that her mother is no longer living with them; she’s gone. López writes, “Mom always had after-school projects waiting for me… I guess these projects were chores, but they were fun too. Now, when I come home, I’ve got to sweep, fold towels, or scrub the bathroom sink. Dad helps, but sometimes he makes a big mess” (López paragraph 1). The narrator displays almost a feeling of disappointment and/or loss. Her liking for her mother’s projects shows that she really misses having her around and is not the happiest about having just her father, since she now has to do all the cleaning and her dad isn’t of much help. The loss of the narrator’s mother is the basis for the conflict that arises between her and father. Their different viewpoints create tension between the two. For example, when the the main character and her dad are eating dinner, she get annoyed when he constantly pesters her about her English class, not realizing that she doesn’t feel like talking about it or the book that she left in her locker which her father wanted to find (his own copy) at home for her. The text states, “Nothing’s more important than his books and vocabulary words. He might say I matter, but when he goes on a scavenger hunt for a book, I realize that I really don’t (Paragraph 26). This statement displays an

Towards the beginning of the story, the mother reveals that she has decided to move to Costa Rica to complete her research and finally earn her degree. Following this, she tells her daughter that she will have to live with her grandma for the two months that her mom will be away. This news causes the narrator to be very upset as one could predict. Towards the end of the section, we see that part of her sadness is because she no longer has her father. Cervantes writes, “I burrowed my head under the pillow with the baseball. A tiny piece of me felt guilty for stealing it, but it belonged to my dad and that made it special. That made it part of me” (Cervantes paragraph 46). The missing piece in the narrator’s life, her father, results in her wanting to cling on to whatever she has left. This may include her home, which provides a sense of closeness to her. Since she has to leave her home and everything in it, it makes her upset. In addition to this, the narrator and her mother have very different perspectives. Her mom believes that leaving home to stay with her grandma will be a really great adventure for her, whereas she wants to stay home or even come with her mom, but she definitely doesn’t want to go to New Mexico to stay with her Nana. This leads to a disagreement/argument