• Alvarez associates Lucinda Maria Victoria de la Torre with poetry because of her relationship with Roe, as well as for her poem which wins a prize at the boarding school.
• Boarding schools in the Northeast are full of cliques and are usually organized according to gender.
• Girls often wear white shirts, plaid skirts, and sensible shoes; boys wear chinos, white shirts, jackets dock siders.
• Historical note: in the 1980's, the preppy colors were pink and green, see the Preppy Handbook.
• Models for Alvarez's boarding schools probably include Phillips Academy in Andover, in Massachusetts
• Miss Wood's: setting for the showdown between Lucinda and Yo, also funds the production of a literary magazine (gothic, "The Cover usually featured a sketch of someone walking in a graveyard with a bare branch swaying in the breeze and some poor butterfly hovering over a tombstone." 40
• Assumptions about the Dominican Republic: third world, revolutionary and therefore unstable

The Maid's Daughter: Report
Alvarez associates the report with Sarita because Yo writes about her acculturation.  Recent narratives about acculturation include Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory (on the Mexican American experience)

The Teacher: Romance
Alvarez associates romance with Professor Garfield, a man who discovers his gay sexuality late in life, a man who also has a tender place for Yo.

The Stranger: epistle
Alvarez associates Yo with the epistle.  She meets Consuelo who wants to write a letter to her daughter, Ruth, who has emigrated to the US and married a Puerto Rican.  Consuelo's words falter, and Yo provides them, advising Ruth to seek help and not put up with abuse.