In Chapter 3, the author explores the emotional and affective ruptures that offer signals to filhas de criação about their second-class status in these families. As ruptures do not always (or even often) lead to critiques of the adoptive family, she focuses on how filhas de criação identify, interpret, and respond to these moments in order to examine how they make meaning of their abuse and exploitation. She analyzes their differential responses to their adoptive family’s incongruent affective performances, and the way that they resolve them through ambiguous discourses of love and affection. As the author examines the contours of affective captivity, she shows that filhas de criação are not passive, but rather can manipulate the system of affective relations for their own ends.

In Chapter 7, the author pinpoints the diverse strategies of resistance and agency employed by filhas de criação throughout the life course. She suggests that their resistance to racial, gender, and class domination, much like their captivity, occurs on multiple levels, including through their affective performances, their manipulation of the family ideology, escape, subterfuge, and their reinterpretation and rejection of certain family relationships. By organizing these resistance strategies based on women’s status at the time of the interview (those who escaped and severed ties, those who moved out but remain attached to their adoptive families, and those who plan to live with their families until they die), the author illustrates how resistance and emancipation exist at all levels of family embeddedness and are enacted in ways that allow filhas de criação to find their own sense of freedom.