The two major speakers in these stories (and there may be only two; the speaker in "Bread" may be Clemencia, who also narrates "Never Marry a Mexican"), although they exist in very dissimilar settings, are alike in several ways. Both see themselves as independent women, having to work to support themselves and rather happier than otherwise to be able to do so. Both see themselves as powerful, specifically within their relationships with the men in their lives, and the power of each consists of a kind of magic: Clemencia is a painter who can "make" and "remake" her art and her subjects; Inés is a witch who can see past and future as well as present. Yet both, at least in the monologues that make up the stories, seem to define themselves and their lives by their relationships to men. Each is bitter that she is not the central woman in the man's life, yet neither seems willing (or perhaps able) to end her relationship. Clemencia, especially, seems tied to her ex-lover to the point that she "circles around" him obsessively. Perhaps the reader finds this obsession less understandable in her case only because she has no children from the relationship, whereas Inés does have children with Zapata; Clemencia reveals that she has had affairs with other men, while Inés has not, but for each of these women her relationship with the man she addresses (Drew, Zapata) is obviously the central and only serious romantic relationship of her life.
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