Digging The Day Of The Dead By Juanita Garciagodoy

In digging the day of the dead a distinction between Dia de los Muertos and Halloween is made, the purpose, to highlight the differences and showing the importance and significance of Dia de los Muertos. This ethnography begins by loosely describing Halloween in American culture, it is described as a day where “children dress up as grotesque corpses” and a celebration empty of historic or cultural significance and knowledge. The author Juanita Garciagodoy, later goes on to describe Dia de los Muertos in a romanticized way, by statin that the dead “are not forgotten or excluded from recollections, prayer, or holidays because they are no longer visible” Garciagodoy then goes on to tell a heartfelt story about a couple one holding on to tradition,

By this, I mean, that the author is clearly passionate and personal with the practice of Dia de los Muertos. The author writes and explains Dia de los Muertos in a romantised manner, and in a way that it feels as if Dia de los Muertos is the purest way of honoring the dead, for example Garciagodoy

An ethnography should have a balance between opinion and research. This text had the potential to contribute truth, history, cultural practices and importance, about Dia de los Muertos. The information, poetry, and stories presented, where them selves, beautiful; however, the tone and language used, clouded and distracted from the purpose and content. A balance between personal ideas and what the cultural practice is, without personal bias would have transcended the message of the ethnography, and made it about the practice it self, not the authors feelings on the