1. Age
1.1. Lupe is in high school and her age impacts her because of her desires. She feels that if she has a baby then she will have someone to love her unconditionally without realizing that having a baby at her age will be much more difficult than she thinks it would be.
1.1.1. Throughout the story Lupe's main struggle is her desire for someone to love her and she thinks her best chance at this is to have a baby. She does not take into account her age and she feels jealous of her young friends who have had a teen pregnancy and now have a baby of their own. I think her age plays a major role throughout the book when she decides to make her new goal an investment in herself and her future college career. Especially after she communicates with her friends and sister and they tell her that they wish they had the chance to go to college and that being a young mother is incredibly hard work.
2. Sexual Orientation
2.1. Lupe is interested in males. She longs to be loved for who she is. She is very interested in a heterosexual relationship so that she can become pregnant and carry a baby.
3. Race
3.1. Lupe identifies as an Hispanic. She struggles with being the minority and being less privileged, having to work must harder to gain a rightful place in this world and that feeling is due to her race.
4. Class
4.1. Lupe goes to a less than privileged school and does not consider the neighborhood that she lives in to be a nice one. Her father abandoned her mother, siblings and herself when she was very young so she now grows up in a single-parent home. Her mother is remarried but her "step-father" does not treat any of them with kindness.
5. Goal from Banks
5.1. I associated the goal from the Banks chapter with race because it played an important part in why the characters throughout the book felt oppressed. “A key goal of multicultural education is to help individuals gain greater self-under-standing by viewing themselves from the perspectives of other cultures. Multicultural education assumes that with acquaintance and understanding, respect may follow.” (Banks, 2) I felt that this book's main goal was to relate to children who feel oppressed in similar ways and situations but to also expand the viewpoints of students who grow up with a completely different experience in order to expand their understanding of cultures other than their own.
6. Gender
6.1. Lupe identifies as a female. She is a super sweet girl that has a kind heart and is quick to compliment and support others. I feel like her gender impacts her character because of her strong interest in being a mother so that she has someone to love her.
7. Ability
7.1. Lupe only has a goal of finding love at the beginning of the book but by the end she realizes what she is capable of and begins working very hard in her classes and really believes in herself and her ability to get into a college.
7.1.1. By the end of the book the students in Mr. Ward's class that participated in the poetry readings saw a major change to Lupe. She was very obviously working hard to achieve good grades in school to support her new ultimate goal of going to college. It was amazing what she could do when she believed in herself.
8. Language
8.1. Lupa speaks English and Spanish. Majority of her story is told in English but she definitely incorporates Spanish phrases into their life. It is unclear what her first language was but she is bilingual.
9. Religion
9.1. Lupe's religion is not super clear, I believe she is christian, God was mentioned during her story and she says a prayer asking for someone to love her. She is comfortable in her religion and prays to gain support and guidance in her goals.
10. Quote
10.1. "I'm not sure what I want to major in at college. I know I want to do something with kids, though. Maybe become a kindergarten teacher, or a peditrician." (Grimes, 147)
10.1.1. I selected this quote to show the importance of why I chose this character because she really was impacted by these elements of the flower diagram and they helped her to change her goals and ambitions by the end of the year so that she would invest in herself and her future career but still incorporate children into her goals.