My Name's Maria, Not Mary: Memoirs of a Colombian Campesina

Young Berenita, as she is known, watches as the children walk by giggling and laughing without a care in the world on

their way to school She helps her Papá Antonio and dreams of the day she will make him proud of her, she vows that she will make him as proud as her as she is of him She watches the children and reflects on the fact that she doesn't remember her mother and she can't afford to go to school She is barefoot with her long blond, tangled curls all over her head Her father shows her a picture of her mother that died when she was so young, but she's not that interested in that, because she doesn't know what it's like to have a mother She adores her Papá and her brother Álvaro, because that is all she really knows, for now.