Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention".The house fell silent a moment, before Yoyo heard, far off, the gun blasts and explosions, the serious, self-important voices of newscasters reporting their TV war.
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention".Yoyo didn't need much encouragement. She put her nose to the fire, as her mother would have said, and read from start to finish without looking up. When she concluded, she was a little embarrassed at the pride she took in her own words. She pretended to quibble with a phrase or two, then looked questioningly to her mother. Laura's face was radiant. Yoyo turned to share her pride with her father.
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention".But Laura's inventing days were over just as Yoyo's were starting up with her school-wide success. Rather than the rolling suitcase everyone else in the family remembers, Yoyo thinks of the speech her mother wrote as her last invention. It was as if, after that, her mother had passed on to Yoyo her pencil and pad and said, "Okay, Cuquita, here's the buck. You give it a shot."
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention"."Maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, there's something they've missed that's important. With patience and calm, even a burro can climb a palm." This last was one of her many Dominican sayings she had imported into her scrambled English.
Which of Laura’s misquoted idioms from "Daughter of Invention" is intended to mean that it makes no difference to her?
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention"."Ay, Cuquita." That was her communal pet name for whoever was in her favor. "Cuquita, when I make a million, buy you your very own typewriter." (Yoyo had been nagging her mother for one just like the one her father had bought to do his order forms at home.) "Gravy on the turkey" was what she called it when someone was buttering her up. She buttered and poured. "I'll hire you your very own typist."
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention".Meanwhile, Yoyo was on her knees, weeping wildly, collecting all the little pieces of her speech, hoping that she could put it back together before the assembly tomorrow morning. But not even a sibyl could have made sense of those tiny scraps of paper. All hope was lost. "He broke it, he broke it," Yoyo moaned as she picked up a handful of pieces.
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention"."iYa, ya!" She waved them out of her room at last. "There is no use trying to drink spilt milk, that's for sure."
Which excerpt from "Daughter of Invention" contains language that best represents the preservation of Dominican values?
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention"."Thanks, thanks a lot, Mom!" Yoyo stormed out of that room and into her own. Her daughters never called her Mom except when they wanted her to feel how much she had failed them in this country. She was a good enough Mami, fussing and scolding and giving advice, but a terrible girlfriend parent, a real failure of a Mom.
Did you find these answers helpful?