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I had started reading Gone with the Wind. I was enthralled by it, with the daring and the passion of the beautiful girl living in a mansion, and with her devoted parents and the slaves who did everything for them.

This passage falls in the middle of the story as Elena fantasizes about visiting Eugene’s house. Elena imagines sitting at his kitchen table with him, talking about books, and asking him questions about Gone with the Wind because it is set in Georgia, his home state. Elena is captivated by Scarlett O’Hara, the main character of the book, a wealthy white woman living on a plantation at the time of the Civil War. Gone with the Wind depicts slavery from the perspective of the white people who held enslaved Black people in bondage. Elena’s admiration of Scarlett shows the allure of whiteness, tempting Elena, a person of color, to see herself in the role of the spoiled white woman rather than identifying with the enslaved people of color in the book. Ortíz Cofer places this detail in the context of Elena’s desire to join Eugene and his white family, a contrast with the discomfort of her memories of Puerto Rico described in the previous paragraph, emphasizing the appeal of joining the white world.

The light through the large kitchen window of his house told me that El Building blocked the sun to such an extent that they had to turn lights on in the middle of the day. I felt ashamed about it. But the white kitchen table with the lamp hanging just above it looked cozy and inviting.

This passage occurs late in the story when Elena prepares to visit Eugene’s house and shows how Elena has learned to feel ashamed of her building as an extension of her Puerto Rican identity. Rather than feeling pride in her building’s vibrant and supportive community, Elena feels ashamed that her building casts a shadow on the house. The house represents the old Paterson without immigrants and people of color who now fill the town’s factories and schools. Elena’s discomfort at the shadow El Building casts reflects her sense that people like her are intruding on the lives of white people, marring the perfection of their lives just by existing. The contrast in Elena’s attitude toward the two buildings shows how living in a racist and xenophobic society has left Elena more inclined to feel sympathy for the more privileged native-born citizens of the town than to defend her right to claim space there.

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