The back cover of The Girls in My Town, by Angela Morales, states that the book is “poignant, serious and funny” and is “both a coming-of-age story and an exploration of how a writer discovers her voice.” This is most evident in the first paragraph of each essay, and at times, the first paragraph of later essays ties the adult to the child mentioned earlier, and echoes throughout the essay.
For example, in her essay, “Skin and Toes, Ears and Hear,” Morales explains how, at age eight, she “woke up Christmas morning to find that Santa had left me a new bicycle,” and that the bicycle “would provide me with my ticket to freedom—–my first real view of the big blue horizon—–no little brothers, no little sisters, no barking dogs—–just wind in the face and plenty of asphalt” (59). The essay goes on to reveal her first encounter with a pervert, and ruminates on encountering perverts throughout her life, and how as a parent, she has her kids “study his face” of a pervert who lives nearby. As a child, her bicycle gave her freedom, which also brought danger. This is echoed in her essay “Riding in the Dark.” She opens the essay explaining how she is often up before dawn and gets on her bike, “creeping through the darkness like some criminal” (111). On these adult morning rides, it is animals that replace the perverts of her childhood. The mountain lion that surprises her, causing her to “fumble for the pedal as it spins around” (114) as she tries to keep her balance which mirrors her sudden swerve and loss of balance as a child when she first encountered a pervert. She mirrors her childhood again as she describes her ride down the hill toward home, coasting “at twenty-five miles per hour, wind running through me like chilly river water” (119), much like “wind in the face and plenty of asphalt” (59) as a kid. And as a final nod to her childhood, and one more connection of the adult to that child, Morales explains how “each morning, that thing saves my life, allows me to widen the boundaries” (119). Since Morales was eight, she has used her bicycle as vehicle to broaden her horizons, and her observations and experiences carry through her work.
The first paragraph of each essay in The Girls of My Town works not only to connect to an earlier essay, but to set the tone and subject for the essay itself. The first paragraph of “Bloodyfeathers RIP” clarifies that Morales is a teacher instead of working in her parents appliance store she speaks of in the first essay, and it also sets up tension with the line “it was the kind of weather that made you want to kill somebody” (131). It is shortly after, on the next page, that she introduces Bloodyfeathers, a recent parolee. The first paragraph of “In Defense of the Rat” works in a similar manner. As Morales talks or her daughter wanting a hamster, “some creature to cradle in her hands, one that would nuzzle its whiskers against her nose, take a peanut from her fingers, perform somersaults across a little trapeze” (121), the reader is reminded of “An Elegy (and Apology) to the Dogs I’ve Loved.” So, then, as Morales comes of age from one essay to the next, and discovers her own voice, she harkens back to the experiences that gave her voice.