With Soto’s strategic blending of English and Spanish, these two stories highlight the challenges involved in Finding Belonging in a Multicultural Society. Specifically, when characters like Luis Molina weave both English and Spanish words into a conversation, the narrative implicitly emphasizes his grandson Hector’s status as a member of two completely different cultural worlds: mainstream American society and his family’s Mexican culture. This tumultuous blending of cultures gives rise to Luis’s exaggerated faith in the nine-year-old Hector’s ability to navigate adult aspects of American culture. For this reason, the story creates a bittersweet but humorous tone when old man assumes that the boy will also understand the adult nuances of the real estate world. Hector’s youth and nervousness are emphasized in his stilted conversation with the real estate agent who answers the phone, for he cuts off her description of the house to ask, “How much?” as “his hands clenched tightly around the telephone” (27). The tension Hector feels about serving as a go-between for his grandfather is evident in his tight grip. His grandfather’s unrealistic expectations thus highlight the challenges for kids who must navigate a multicultural world on behalf of elders who are not as adept at doing the same.

In “Barbie,” the protagonist’s conflicted feelings about her two dolls work as an entirely different way to express this same sense of disconnection that comes from straddling two very different—but frequently overlapping—cultural realities. Specifically, the physical contrasts between the two dolls represent the challenges of identity and belonging that Veronica must face as she tries to navigate the differences in cultural beauty standards. The previous Christmas, Veronica was gifted with a “black-haired doll with a flat, common nose, not like Barbie’s cute, upturned one,” and she calls it an “ugly thing” because she believes that it is not “real” (34). Veronica’s reaction to the doll reflects the damage caused by mainstream perceptions of beauty. Because Veronica places greater value on the doll that does not represent her own physical characteristics, it is clear that American culture has taught her to undervalue herself. By extension, her disdain for the dark-haired doll also reflects internalized judgment of her own family’s cultural heritage.

Significantly, this new doll is a gift from Uncle Rudy’s white girlfriend-turned-fiancée, and its blond hair and blue eyes reflect society’s limited ideal of beauty: something that Veronica subconsciously longs for herself. In Veronica’s eyes, the blond doll is perfect, and she is so covetous of it that she damages her relationship with her friend Martha in defense of the doll itself. At the story’s conclusion, however, when she sleeps with both the headless Barbie and her original black-haired doll, her decision to carry “them lovingly to bed” (42) represents her new willingness to embrace the various aspects of her multicultural identity.

Both stories also add to Soto’s focus on The Challenges of the Coming-of-Age Journey. In Hector’s case, his grandfather pushes him to handle tasks that are better suited to an adult, and although Hector dislikes the task of calling the real estate agent, he does it as a favor for his grandfather, demonstrating familial loyalty even as he learns that his grandfather is far from all-knowing. Similarly, Veronica’s crisis with the two dolls forces her to grapple with her own internalized sense of inferiority, surrounded as she is by beauty standards that leave no place for her. This issue is articulated when she claims not to hate the dark-haired doll but nonetheless flings it against the wall, chipping its face. Her final decision to sleep with both marred dolls suggests her realization that nothing and no one, including herself, is perfect.