Instead of seeking connection, Xuela's self-exploration isolates her.
Lack of love shapes the narrator's life.
Her steely father is a government official by virtue of mixed Carib and Scottish heritage. Xuela's gray-eyed father sends her into various unsatisfactory living conditions. First with his laundress, then as a de facto courtesan to one of his colleges. Although he ensures that she gets an education, she is left on her own to navigate the inevitable trials of coming of age as a woman of color on a colonized island offering few choices. Autobiography taken to an extreme is her escape.