In "Barbie-Q," the theme of alienation may be seen as an undercurrent beneath what the speaker actually says. One reading might see the flawed dolls as representing the girls' own self-image. As poor children, members of a cultural minority, the speaker and her friend (especially if we assume that they actually identify themselves with the dolls, perhaps not a wholly correct assumption) may see themselves as somehow "flawed," not as "the real thing," the future ideal American woman, white and middle-class (mean-eyed and "bubbleheaded" — that is, wearing the Jackie Kennedy bouffant), but instead as somehow a kind of cut-rate, smoke-damaged version whose defects can be hidden but will always be there. (To support this reading, we may note that in a later story, "Never Marry a Mexican," the adult narrator describes her ex-lover's wife unflatteringly as "a red-headed Barbie doll.") Another possible reading, of course, based quite firmly in the narrator's words, is one in which the girls, being fairly sophisticated, know that their dolls are just dolls and have, in their own regard, as healthy a sense of self-worth as possible for children who have been given the idea that an eyelash brush is a necessary piece of equipment for a young woman.
Displacement is at the heart of "'Mericans," where the children — strangers in their father's country, their relatives' city, and their grandmother's church — are further alienated from each other by gender, with the little boys calling each other "girl" as an insult. The narrator is beginning to be alienated from herself, wanting to cry but stopping because "crying is what girls do." Finally, in a nice bit of irony, two Americans with a camera appear, looking for a picturesque subject. Spotting the children, they do not recognize their fellow U.S. citizens but, instead, assume they are little Mexicans whom they can photograph for their travel album.
