Comment on Point of view

This short novel is told from the first person point of view of 13 different narrators. Each narrator tells about his own experience with the garden in his unique voice. The different voices illustrate the variety of people living in the neighborhood. Kim, for instance, is Vietnamese; Ana is white; Virgil’s father is from Haiti; Sae Young is a first generation immigrant from Korea; and Curtis is a black man. The narrators also are a variety of ages. Kim is nine; Leona a young mother probably in her thirties: Ana and Florence are both elderly; and Curtis is a young man of marrying age, probably in his twenties. While most of the gardeners do speak English, language is a barrier for some of them. Gonzalo, for instance, tells how his Tío Juan knows a good deal about gardening but is only able to share his knowledge through pantomime because no one but Gonzalo’s mother understands the dialect that Juan speaks. Sae Young speaks English, but her speech is the broken English of someone who has learned English as a second language. The author employs a variety of narrators to represent the variety of people who live in the Cleveland neighborhood.