Curiously, things start to change completely when one of the workers, acknowledging that Yolanda does not respond to their many inquiries – “Is there some problem?”, “Señorita, are you all right?”, “Can we help you?” –, perceive her as an American woman: “‘ Americana,’ he says to the darker man, pointing to the car. As the narrator tells again, “But her tongue feels as if it has been stuffed in her mouth like a rag to keep her quiet.” (ALVAREZ, 1992, p. In fact, it is meaningful that the narrator employs the word “tongue”, which can refer not only to the muscle but to the Spanish language as well, when telling how frightened and paralyzed the protagonist of Antojos feels. But, panic-stricken, Yolanda is unable to put her plan into practice, as though her tongue had been cut off. As the narrator says, “She considers explaining that she is just out for a drive before dinner at the big house, so that these men will think someone knows where she is, someone will look for her if they try to carry her off.” (ALVAREZ, 1992, p. At first, the character, having recognizing their superior physical strength in comparison to herself, tries to conceive a plan to deceive those men, making them quite aware of her relations in that area. It is interesting to highlight in that event the power that Yolanda acquires by using the English language to talk to the workers. Although the protagonist of the short story feels unsafe in this situation, she succeeds at protecting herself, once those men see her as an American and discover that she knows rich, powerful people who live around, putting themselves under Yolanda in social terms and giving up any violent attempt – if they really had thought of it – to approach her. However, Yolanda – who belongs to the upper classes of the Dominican Republic – puts herself at risk when she crosses the guarded borders of her family’s proprieties in her strong desire, or antojos, for eating guavas, has an issue with a flat tire in her car, and finds herself alone with two men who were coming out from of their work, fearing that the warnings of kidnapping, rape, and murder said by her aunts come true. In order to do so, and considering her relatives’ and her own worries about the possibility of forgetting her native tongue, she talks to her family in Spanish, the language that everyone in her house speaks, and gets information about her country that may be important to know, as she wants to ride by herself there. Welcomed with a feast by her relatives – aunts and cousins above all –, the character aims to feel at home again in the Dominican Republic. In “Antojos”, a short story by the Dominican American writer Julia Alvarez, a third-person narrator tells about the returning of its protagonist, Yolanda, to her birth place after spending five years in a row in the United States.
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