Yolanda Timeline and Summary

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• Little Yoyo finds a kitten in the coal shed, and takes it away from its mother. The she throws it out the window.
• Yoyo is haunted by the mother cat every night, for years.
• Even as an adult, Yoyo wakes up in the middle of the night and hears the mother cat.
• Yoyo gets jealous because her best friend cousin Mundín gets all the cool presents. Just because he's a boy.
• Yoyo gets interested in a book for the first time.
• Yoyo agrees to show Mundín her private parts in the coal shed in exchange for his cool clay.
• On her last day living on the Island, Yoyo sees her Papi running to hide from the secret police.
• Yoyo's afraid the secret police are at her house because of the story she told when she was five about Papi having a gun.
• Yoyo is invited to deliver a speech to the entire ninth grade, and she finally manages to write something in English that she's proud of. Papi censors her speech, but she does get her own typewriter out of the deal.
• As a teenager, Yoyo and her sisters go to the Island for their summer vacations. She and her sisters rescue Fifi from her loser macho boyfriend.
• Yoyo goes out with her first college boyfriend, Rudy Elmenhurst, but won't have sex with him, because he's kind of a jerk.
• Yoyo starts dating a nice enough—but monolingual—dude, and they get married. It's lukewarm at best.
• Yo's in a hospital after a mental breakdown. She goes over the story of her failed marriage in her head, and starts to develop a crush on her therapist.
• Yoyo gives a poetry reading after a long break from writing. She reads a sexy poem about her boyfriend, Clive. In front of her mother. It's weird.
• Clive goes back to his wife.
• Yolanda is recently divorced. Grown-up Yoyo visits her family on the Island, thinking she might stay for a while. Is this her home?