What i want my words to do to you - Book Report/Review Example

Q Ans. One character that appealed to me the most was Keila Pulinario. To start with, Keila seems and sounds very truthful and realistic. From her attitude, I could tell that she was not lying. She was not pretending to be someone, rather she was just being the way her real self was. This is apparent from the fact that when she is asked if she had worked on the task since last week, she straight-forwardly says, “no”, and when asked further, “were you going to?” she says, “I don’t know”.

Her story is also very touchy. I was quite moved and surprised to find out that one’s best friend can be a source of that much emotional, psychological, and physical pain as it had been for Keila. Keila was imprisoned because she had killed her best friend, and she explains why. She says that her best friend raped her, and threatened her. In her attempt to protect herself in case she is left with no option, she took a gun with her when she went to see him. Overwhelmed with pain and emotional distress, she asked the man why and how could he do what he had done to her, and the man seemed indifferent to all that pain.

Rather than feeling sorry and apologizing to Keila for what he had done to her, and trying to compensate for the grief he had brought her in some way, the man laughed out loud at her and said that he would do it again. Keila could not take that inhumanly behavior particularly when he came to her with a knife and was about to rape her again. Overcome with the desire for revenge and anger combined with a strong urge to defend herself, she shot him dead. Keila’s story is very different because the man she shot dead was not someone whom she had met as a grown up, rather he was someone she had grown up with.

She had known him for most part of her life and yet the man turned out to be someone even worse than the strangers. The fact that Keila is Hispanic also has a role to play in why she is in the prison. Keila agrees to the fact that Hispanics or African Americans tend to resolve their matters themselves rather than taking every petty matter to the security forces. They are already struggling and dealing with the issues of racism and ethnicity, and being caught up in such situations makes life even more difficult for them.

Being a girl, Keila required a very strong emotional bond with her mother but she says that she did not have one. She agrees that her mother is a caring person and that she always provided for her, but she also says that she could not have the attention of her mother the way she had wanted. Keila’s mother cannot believe that Keila has killed the man. Apparently, Keila has to deal with all guilt, sorrow, and pain all by herself and does not have anyone to share it with. From her attitude, she sounds like a truthful and mature lady who ended up doing a mistake for which she is now paying.