The reconciliation between father and daughter reflects his willingness to let her invent herself as she must to fit into American culture, and his desire to encourage her ambition and talent through writing. Yolanda's second speech serves as a compromise between the American intellectual revolutionary and the Dominican traditionalist sides of her personality. Her mother helps her to integrate these two aspects of her heritage before discarding her hopes of fame and riches as an inventor. This may indicate Laura's disillusionment with the American dream, or her satisfaction with the role she has created for herself as a wife and mother to a Dominican family living in the United States.