43 pages • 1 hour read
Judith Ortiz CoferCall Me Maria
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
María
As the protagonist and narrator of the novel, María is a young teenager who has moved from Puerto Rico to New York. Since the novel is told from María’s perspective, all of her thoughts and feelings are relayed directly throughout the text. As she navigates her new environment, she describes her different selves and her reactions to different scenarios. In particular, her heavier emotions are reserved for her family relationships and her school experiences, though she describes many other aspects of her life as well. The core of María’s ongoing conflict, as implied by the title Call Me María, is the struggle to accurately define who she is.
Much of the conflict of the novel revolves around María’s teenage concerns: her relationships with Mami and Papi, her experiences at her school, and her evolving sense of identity. Family dynamics are often a dominant thematic element of young adult novels; however, Ortíz Cofer complicates this common thread in a nuanced way in Call Me María. Not only are María’s parents separated rather than officially divorced, but they have also chosen to live apart for reasons beyond the typical conflicts. María’s father feels more at home in New York, while her mother feels more at home in Puerto Rico. María must struggle to decide which place she most identifies with, and throughout the novel, she works steadily toward a difficult emotional resolution in which she will ultimately find herself set apart from both parents. Portraying this narrative through María’s perspective is an important authorial choice that serves to support young readers who are facing similar family conflicts in search of their own resolutions.
Language plays a profound role in María’s ongoing search for identity, and she expresses her thoughts about this topic frequently in her poems, letters, and stories, reflecting philosophically on the role of language in her life and describing her experiences using a range of interesting details and words from both Spanish and English. Toward the end of the novel, María defines herself as a poet, clarifying her longstanding, complicated relationship with expressing herself in words. María also becomes more adept at navigating between her various languages, feeling more confident in her ability to say precisely what she means to articulate.
María’s Father, Papi
Papi appears intermittently in the novel, mainly due to María’s perception of his rather sporadic presence in her life. A New York-born Puerto Rican, Papi lived in Puerto Rico during María’s childhood and then moved back to New York after suffering a significant bout of clinical depression. In New York, Papi is the superintendent of an apartment building in a neighborhood filled with immigrants from many different places. Papi fixes houses, plays music, and spends time partying on the weekends. María observes all of Papi’s activities with a detached eye, working to figure out what her relationship to him is now that they share a home.
An interesting facet of Ortíz Cofer’s portrayal of Papi is that he is primarily a supporting character, yet there is still a palpable connection between him and his daughter. As their relationship unfolds, María observes Papi’s choices and actions and develops her own analysis of his behavior. In many ways, Papi’s complexity as a person is a key component of what allows María to figure out her own identity in this new place.
María’s Mother, Mami
Mami is an elegant woman who teaches English in her homeland of Puerto Rico. Most of the descriptions of Mami take place in the past, during María’s childhood. María idolizes her mother and describes her with positive, loving language throughout these stories. In María’s eyes, Mami is a tired but gracious parent who fosters her daughter’s engagement with learning. In her letters to María, Mami uses high-level vocabulary and intricate descriptions; it is clear that Mami’s influence is an integral part of María’s path to become a poet.
María’s childhood memories of Mami are complicated by her real-time feelings toward her mother, who is back on the Island and is absent from much of the conflict of the novel. In the final sections of the story, Mami breaks the news that she is getting married to another teacher on the Island, and this devastating news shatters María’s perfect image of her mother. Now, she must redefine what Mami means to her. When Mami leaves, María is closer to becoming her own self, in many ways separate from her desire to be with or like her mother.
Whoopee
Whoopee Dominguez is María’s closest friend and is a unique adolescent with a style and rhythm all her own. María admires Whoopee’s fearlessness, describing her as a kind of whirlwind who does what she wants, how she wants. Not much about Whoopee’s background or life is described, so in some ways she is a flat character, but she also serves an important role in helping María to develop her confidence. Although Whoopee is unafraid of most things, she is self-conscious about her appearance, which is a conflict that María also encounters, albeit on a smaller scale. Whoopee’s self-consciousness about her physical appearance is used to highlight the reality that there are few, if any, positive examples in New York City that reflect Puerto Rican standards of beauty. Through her friendship with Whoopee, María is able to make inferences about the invisible inequalities within the dominant culture that surrounds her. She also learns to challenge herself to speak up and to be more fully herself.
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By Judith Ortiz Cofer
