Content Warning: This section discusses racism, domestic violence, sex trafficking, and mistreatment of patients in a psychiatric hospital.

Dolls function as a motif representing traditional feminine traits under patriarchy, such as fragility, beauty, and a lack of agency. When Connie imagines helping her niece raise a family, she recognizes that this is only a fantasy and compares it to paper dolls: “[T]he only dolls she had had as a child, dolls with blond paper hair and Anglo features and big paper smiles” (8). Such dolls are easily destroyed, representing the fragility of her dream of family life. They also have white features, hinting at The Intersectional Nature of Feminist Struggle; the “ideal” woman under Western patriarchy is implicitly a white woman. This ideal is far removed from Connie’s own life, and not just because of her ethnicity. Rather, her life has required her to be tough and independent, and it has aged her prematurely.

Significantly, one of the most conventionally feminine characters in the novel, Connie’s niece, goes by the nickname “Dolly” rather than her given name, Dolores, which means “sorrow” in Spanish. Both pertain to her situation, as she is abused and trafficked by her boyfriend, Geraldo.