My Broken Language: A Memoir

The long-absent Flor finally reappears during Thanksgiving of Quiara’s junior year. When they get a break from cooking, Flor takes Quiara upstairs and sits her on the couch. She shows Quiara her gold necklace, which reads NA for Narcotics Anonymous. She tells Quiara about her sobriety and her efforts to make amends and accept God into her life, then asks if she can say the serenity prayer. Quiara agrees, but inside her, a “toady little cynic was turning somersaults” at the mention of God (226). However, she thinks about her mother’s premonitions, Vivi’s near miss with the bullet in her brain, and her own experiences with possession. 

She listens to Flor say the prayer, thinking that her cousin’s sobriety is just as significant an accomplishment as her courses at Yale. With her confession, Flor also undoes the family’s silence.

At Yale, Sterling Library takes up half a city block. It has 3,000 stained glass windows and houses millions of books. Quiara loves wandering through the library and reading in silence. However, the library also underscores the “whiplash […] bordering on absurd” that separate Sterling Library from Quiara’s neighborhood in North Philly. As time passes, Quiara thinks more and more about the gulf separating her from her illiterate cousin