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How a person’s social class affects his or her chances of success
How a person’s social class affects his or her chances of success
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In Elvia Alvarado’s memoir Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, she expresses the struggles that people such as herself, and numerous other Honduran citizens face every day. Elvia Alvarado was a Honduran woman, who was considered a peasant. She was born into a poor family in the countryside of Honduras. The book retails stories from Alvarado’s life and the obstacles she is forced to overcome in hopes of achieving a better life for herself and the people around her. She faces oppression due to her social class, ideals, and especially her gender. At the same time though, she is able to find support through these communities. While the odds are stacked against Elvia Alvarado, she is able to continuously preserve, …show more content…
Alvarado was born into a poor social class where her father did not own any land. Land is a major issue for Honduran people because only a few wealthy people owned all the land, and everyone else was forced to work for these large landowners. The inequality stretches further because majority of these landowner do not have legal right to the land, which is where Alvarado’s participation in groups that fight for the return of their land begins. Social class plays another big role is oppression with the lack of healthcare and education. The lack of healthcare significantly affects the campesinos in that there is a lack of nearby hospitals. If a person is to become in need of a doctor, it is common for the person to die before they can even complete the journey to town. However, even if they were to make it in town by early morning, sometimes the hospital is booked for the entire day. Along with healthcare, the government also poorly aids education. As expressed by Alvarado, “even though elementary school is free, we still have to pay for uniforms, books, and materials… we have to pay for the bus fare too… Many of the high schools charge a monthly fee. In my town they charge $7.50 a month (59)…” Due to the high price of school, it is uncommon for children to make it past the sixth grade. This lack of support for children to go to school hinders their only chance …show more content…
It is the small victories along the way that keep pushing Alvarado to not giving up on her dreams. The first is her children and her aspirations to give them a better life. The idea that if she works hard and stands up for what is right, then her children and future generations will prosper from it. Despite it ultimately cutting her off, the church is also a driving force. Once Alvarado got involved with the church, it gave her the ability to surround herself with other motivated individuals. She used the community she gained from the church to continue fighting for what she believed was right. Finally the support she received from lawyers and doctors gave her hope that it was not just the campesinos that were striving for a more equal life, but it was also people from other social classes. In some of Alvarado’s closing words, “I used to think you has to be poor to be part of this struggle. But there are people in Honduras who aren’t poor, yet they’re on out side. They’re well-educated people – doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers – who identify with the poor (145).” Elvia Alvarado continues to strive for equality for the campesinos because she keeps hope that there are people on her side. There are people in Honduras, there are people in Europe, and there are even people in America, who she believes
As far back as Rigoberta Manchu can remember, her life has been divided between the highlands of Guatemala and the low country plantations called the fincas. Routinely, Rigoberta and her family spent eight months working here under extremely poor conditions, for rich Guatemalans of Spanish descent. Starvation malnutrition and child death were common occurrence here; rape and murder were not unfamiliar too. Rigoberta and her family worked just as hard when they resided in their own village for a few months every year. However, when residing here, Rigoberta’s life was centered on the rituals and traditions of her community, many of which gave thanks to the natural world. When working in the fincas, she and her people struggled to survive, living at the mercy of wealthy landowners in an overcrowded, miserable environment. By the time Rigoberta was eight years old she was hard working and ...
In a story of identity and empowerment, Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem “Borderbus” revolves around two Honduran women grappling with their fate regarding a detention center in the United States after crawling up the spine of Mexico from Honduras. While one grapples with their survival, fixated on the notion that their identities are the ultimate determinant for their future, the other remains fixated on maintaining their humanity by insisting instead of coming from nothingness they are everything. Herrera’s poem consists entirely of the dialogue between the two women, utilizing diction and imagery to emphasize one’s sense of isolation and empowerment in the face of adversity and what it takes to survive in America.
In unique ways for each girl, “home is a prison” and the only way they escape it is through Esperanza (Kalay 123). Esperanza is a symbol of hope as her name foretells. From the beginning Esperanza attracts the girls of the neighborhood to her side. One of the older Latina girls in Esperanza’s life is Alicia. Being a young lady of about 18, Alicia, takes her mother’s place as the one who cooks and cleans. She works hard from sun up to sun down then goes to the university. Alicia symbolized all the young women who worked hard enough in life to one day escape from the poor streets of Chicago. But like many Latina females, Alicia had a difficult life with her father, who abused her as Cisneros suggests. Alicia could escape the poverty but in the end she was just another woman in a male dominant world and nothing more. Not many girls were like Alicia; Sally, for example, was the
Matteo Alacrán is the clone of El Patrón and is the only clone with a brain. El Patrón is the drug lord of a country known as Opium. Opium is a strip of poppy fields found in between the borders of the U.S and what was once known as Mexico. Matt cells split in a petri dish and then placed in the womb of a cow where his cell matured to baby. Matt is considered to be a monster by most people around him, but El Patrón loves because he considers it to be a reflection of himself as matt is derived from El Patrón that matt the scientist has made. He is considered a monster in home town matt struggles to understand his existence. His very existence is threatened by the town and El Patrón power hungry family. Matteo wonders if he will become twisted like El Patrón. El Patrón’s clone is surrounded by thousand of dangerous army bodyguards.
The role of strong female roles in literature is both frightening to some and enlightening to others. Although times have changed, Sandra Cisneros’ stories about Mexican-American women provide a cultural division within itself that reflects in a recent time. The cultural themes in Cisneros’s stories highlight the struggle of women who identify with Mexican-American heritage and the struggle in terms of living up to Mexican culture – as a separate ethnic body. The women in Sandra Cisneros’ stories are struggling with living up to identities assigned to them, while trying to create their own as women without an ethnic landscape. In Sandra Cisneros’ stories “Woman Hollering Creek: and “Never Marry a Mexican” the role of female identities that are conflicted are highlighted, in that they have to straddle two worlds at once as Mexican-American women.
As she tours her hometown, one can see the horrendous circumstances in which her community thrives in, for example, to get from one side to the other they must cross a makeshift bridge where the water has begun to change color such as black, green, even beginning to foam. Numerous health problems have arisen due to the toxic waste that is being dumped into the streams that therefore leading to runoff when it rains such as sores developing on feet and legs, weakened immune system, spots that appear on the limbs, etc. Lujan, a third world feminist (could also be known as an environmental feminist as well) exposes the unsanitary environment in which she lives in, desiring a greater community where her children can live in without the worry of diseases or the contamination of their water sources. Though she was not always a promotora/advocator it was not until Lujan came face to face with a sign inviting women to participate in a health survey furthermore learning about the health risks that she made the decision to be outspoken about the cause. She took workshops to help her better apprehend labor and women’s rights in order to promote laws and speak out against illegal acts conducted by businesses. Therefore, it only makes sense that women would be the most outspoken group of the maquiladoras since they make up eighty percent of the
Using both English and Spanish or Spanglish the author Gloria Anzaldua explores the physical, cultural, spiritual, sexual and psychological meaning of borderlands in her book Borderlands/La Frontera: A New Mestiza. As a Chicana lesbian feminist, Anzaldua grew up in an atmosphere of oppression and confusion. Anzaldua illustrates the meaning of being a “mestiza”. In order to define this, she examines herself, her homeland and language. Anzaldúa discusses the complexity of several themes having to do with borderlands, mestizaje, cultural identity, women in the traditional Mexican family, sexual orientation, la facultad and the Coatlicue state. Through these themes, she is able to give her readers a new way of discovering themselves. Anzaldua alerts us to a new understanding of the self and the world around us by using her personal experiences.
She writes this novel mainly to discuss what kind of problems there are in other countries, like Cuba, Mexico, Honduras, Dominican Republic and many others. People only know about the pretty vacation areas of those types of countries, and don’t really know what the lifestyle and poverty is truly like down there. It informs us about the kind of lifestyles children have, with barely one meal a day, or not even receiving an education like every citizen in the United states is required to take part in. In the novel she talks about Enrique’s Journey and the links he is willing to go through in order to reunite with his mother, and how bad he wants to have a better living environment, with more rights than he does back at
In the opening pages of the text, Mary, nineteen, is living alone in Albuquerque. Vulnerable to love, depressed and adrift, she longs for something meaningful to take her over. Just as she is “asking the universe whether or not there was more to life than just holding down boring jobs”, she takes on the job of helping an illegal (political) refugee, José Luis who had been smuggled from El Salvador to the United States, to adjust to his new life in Albuquerque. She instantly falls in love with him and hopes to start her life over with the new aim of “taking the war out of him.”(p. 4) Providing a refuge for him, Mary, as Fellner suggests, “imagines herself to be whole and complete in the experience of love”. (2001: 72) She willingly puts José Luis as the “center” of her life (p.5) with the hope that “love would free her from her dormant condition” (Fellner 2001: ...
John Steinbeck has a very engaging mind. He not only makes people think when they read his work; he makes them think through a number of scenarios with his tales. I believe that looking at this story, you sense this woman, Elisa Allen, is a woman who is very unhappy with her life. The only satisfaction Elisa gets out of life is being in her garden with her "family" of chrysanthemums. Elisa is very unsettled with her life as a whole. She does not like being stuck on the farm, away from the world and people outside her valley. She does not have any children so she treats her chrysanthemums as if they were her only allowed talent, gift, and special accomplishment, since they are a childless couple.
Esperanza, a Chicano with three sisters and one brother, has had a dream of having her own things since she was ten years old. She lived in a one story flat that Esperanza thought was finally a "real house". Esperanza’s family was poor. Her father barely made enough money to make ends meet. Her mother, a homemaker, had no formal education because she had lacked the courage to rise above the shame of her poverty, and her escape was to quit school. Esperanza felt that she had the desire and courage to invent what she would become.
Elli Grace Fuller is a Nurse at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville, Indiana, she has gorgeous red curly hair, full of volume, like a model’s hair you would see in a magazine. Her hair is about waist length. She has a smile that is contagious, whenever she smiles and wave at someone passing by her they always smile and wave back. When Elli Grace is having a bad day talking with her friends at work always cheers her up. Her eyes are shiny and blue, like a diamond. Her eyes will also remind you of a jewel that shines, and sparkles in the sun. Her clothes look like designer clothing, she always smells good like a vanilla candle. She doesn’t like to wear makeup because she feels like it hides the beauty that God has given her.
The contrast between the Mexican world versus the Anglo world has led Anzaldua to a new form of self and consciousness in which she calls the “New Mestiza” (one that recognizes and understands her duality of race). Anzaldua lives in a constant place of duality where she is on the opposite end of a border that is home to those that are considered “the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel and the mulato” (25). It is the inevitable and grueling clash of two very distinct cultures that produces the fear of the “unknown”; ultimately resulting in alienation and social hierarchy. Anzaldua, as an undocumented woman, is at the bottom of the hierarchy. Not only is she a woman that is openly queer, she is also carrying the burden of being “undocumented”. Women of the borderlands are forced to carry two degrading labels: their gender that makes them seem nothing more than a body and their “legal” status in this world. Many of these women only have two options due to their lack of English speaking abilities: either leave their homeland – or submit themselves to the constant objectification and oppression. According to Anzaldua, Mestizo culture was created by men because many of its traditions encourage women to become “subservient to males” (39). Although Coatlicue is a powerful Aztec figure, in a male-dominated society, she was still seen
In the Book women are looked upon as objects by men whether they are boyfriends, friends fathers or husbands. The girls in the novel grow up with the mentality that looks and appearance are the most important things to a woman. Cisneros also shows how Latino women are expected to be loyal to their husbands, and that a husband should have complete control of the relationship. Yet on the other hand, Cisneros describes the character Esperanza as being different. Even though she is born and raised in the same culture as the women around her, she is not happy with it, and knows that someday she will break free from its ties, because she is mentally strong and has a talent for telling stories. She comes back through her stories by showing the women that they can be independent and live their own lives. In a way this is Cinceros' way of coming back and giving back to the women in her community.
Suaréz, Lucia M. “Julia Alvarez And The Anxiety Of Latina Representation.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 5.1 (2004): 117-145. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 25 Mar.2014.