The Girl With Borrowed Wings by Rinsi Rossetti

     The Girl With Borrowed Wings, by Rinsi Rossetti, is about a girl named Frenenquer Paje, who lives in the desert with her timid mother and oppressive father. Her father doesn't allow her to do anything- express herself, fall in love, be a normal person- if she does not shut the door "politely," then she will have to stand there for hours, opening and closing the door until her father feels that she is "disciplined." Frenenquer claims that she was not conceived in the belly of her mother, but in the mind of her father, in a sunflower field in Italy. He has already planned who he wants her to be- perfect- and he will not stop at anything to fulfill his dream. This is not a culture- although they live in the middle east and their culture is arguably similar to the culture there, they have only lived there for four years, and they are Canadian, Italian, and Thai, and their culture is their own. Her father has affected Frenenquer's life so much that she feels she is unworthy and does not question him. So when a shape-shifter, or a "free person," comes to her house in the form of Sangris, a boy with wings, Frenenquer is wary about flying away each night to have a break from her parents' torture. 
    Frenenquer's father omits any contact with men, even though Frenenquer is sixteen. She feels like she is practically incapable of falling in love, simply because her father thought she should not. When talking about how in her books there is always a boyfriend, she says "He. Does there always have to be a he? It seems weak and unoriginal, doesn’t it, for stories told by girls to always have a he? Well, not in my life, nor in the lives of my friends. …So you see, for there to be a he in my story is a very unusual thing indeed, but then, the circumstances were unusual too, and the boy himself, if you can call him that, even more so." She feels violated when Sangris walks in on her when she is wearing "only a t-shirt and jeans," while this is the normal outfit for someone in a normal family. Her father makes her wear a long sleeved, tan, baggy shirt every day, and a long skirt or pants. When Sangris confesses his love to her and kisses her, she feels sick, and like she is wrongdoing her father by being loved. She then says that she "knows what you're (the reader) thinking," that she really does love Sangris, and doesn't realize it or denies it because of her father's oppression, but that is "not the case." She didn't love him because of the oppression. If her father weren't so strict, she "probably would be in love with him." 
      Frenenquer is trapped in every way, and Sangris is as free as he wants to be, and in that way, they are completely different and similar.  Frenenquer feels she lacks identity because of her father's discipline, and Sangris feels he lacks identity because he is so free that he can never settle in one place. In the end, when Frenenquer finally breaks free of her father, she falls in love with Sangris, and the union of two identity-less adolescents creates an identity: Love.