Commitment In Farmworker’s Daughter, Rose Castillo Guilbault explains what it is like to feel as though you are living two lives. She was a Mexican girl growing up in America. She explains how her life was so different, yet so comparable to those who had moved to America as immigrants before her. She also brings out examples of the prejudices her family faced and the difficulties of overcoming obstacles. Ironically, the title of this paper is commitment. Actually, this story began because of a lack of commitment. Roses father was found cheating on her mother, Maria. When Marias sister, Rachael, who lived in American heard, she told Maria to be a strong independent woman and move to the United States with her. With Rachael’s influence, Maria gained the confidence to move herself and her family to America. Little did she know how much their life was going to change. Immediately when arriving in the United States, Rose was faced with many obstacles. The first of which was language. She couldn’t speak English at all which made attending school a huge issue as a young girl. It didn’t help that because of her language barrier, she wasn’t accepted by many students. As rose slowly gained her knowledge of the English language, her mother followed even slower from having less involvement. Rose had …show more content…
I could be American at school just like everybody else” (Guilbault, 2005,). Rose and her family continuously acted different in public in order to try and fit in with the American culture. She felt as if she had two identities. Even when they returned home to Mexico, life wasn’t the same. Her family then had to be different around their friends and family back home because some of them didn’t believe in Rose’s families decision to move to America. Her favorite thing to do was go on road trips because that was the only time she felt she could be free and herself. She was normal and
Joy Williams, the author of “The Farm” was born and raised in Portland, Maine. She attended and graduated from Marietta College and from there went on to earn a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. In recognition of her writing, she was the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story in 2016. Growing up, she was the daughter of a minister and as such, she often incorporated a religious theme in her novels, essays, and short stories. Similar to Jesus, Williams’ style was to present her stories in the form of parables in the hope of getting an important message across to her readers.
She explains how Mexican and Chicano literature, music, and film is alienated; their culture is considered shameful by Americans. They are forced to internalize their pride in their culture. This conflict creates an issue in a dual culture society. They can neither identify with North American culture or with the Mexican culture.
Richard Rodriguez' narrative, “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” and Carmen Tafolla's poem, “In Memory of Richi” have similar themes. In Rodriguez' narrative, he talks about his experience attending an American school. Similarly, Tafolla recites a story about a boy in an American school setting. Each story implies that students of another culture are subject to lose their cultural ties in order to fit in with the American society.
...rself in between the two, and in doing so partially “unmakes” the ethnic identity passed on to her from her ancestors. The question of whether she is more assimilated into American culture or is more dissimilated from the culture of her ancestors is arbitrary and ambiguous. She is simultaneously both and neither; she is a new person who enjoys the American way of life but will always feel burdened by the “weight” of her ancestors “upon [her]” (297).
Rose observes that his teachers are indifferent and are not concerned with him learning the material in any way. He continues by describing his fellow peers. Rose notes several applaudable qualities about his fellow students, despite them always being lumped together as less intelligent. He wonders if their lacking want for learning is what is keeping them from excelling in school. This mindset is the one he keeps with him when his erroneous placement is corrected. Suddenly, he is expected to achieve and go beyond, something that he was completely unfamiliar with due to his time in lower level studies.
Now, in modern times, affairs seem to be a natural phenomenon of daily life. They are popularly seen in movies, novelas—soap operas and also expressed through literature. Although they are conventionally characterized as passionate and exciting, they can also catalyze a lot of thought and uncertainty for the individuals involved. “Migration” written by Rosa Alcala is a poem that takes a different approach in describing what an affair is. In her poem she rather focuses on describing the stressful cognitive affects that occur as a result of being involved in an affair. Through figures of speech, persona and images the author is able to establishes the feeling of the poem as cautious uncertainty.
On that viscerally vibrant Friday morning, in that urbanized oasis, a group of primarily Black and Hispanic students united at El Cerrito High School to discuss their parents and peers very real struggle to achieve the American dream. The stories of racism, oppression, gentrification, and deportation filled the classroom with the voices of varied languages and vernaculars, a majority of which felt caught between cultures and pulled away at the seams by opposing orientations. These fourteen and fifteen year olds spoke of parents requiring them to speak the language of a place they’ve never been, of teachers demanding a “Standard English” they’ve never been taught, of friends questioning their “Americaness” because they didn’t know the difference between Disneyland and Disney World. This youthful minority-majority population is faced with cultural double identity; a term that reflects the cognitive dissonance an individual feels when their identity is fragmented along cultural, racial, linguistic or ethnic lines. This conflict of self is not isolated in this classroom in San Francisco’s East Bay area. It brims over into every classroom within California, where “no race or ethnic group constitutes a majority of the state’s population” (Johnson). It must be said then, that the culturally and linguistically diverse California classrooms must integrate texts that examine the psychological state of double identity. Turning to Luis Valdez’ play “Zoot Suit”, Chester Himes’s protest novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, and Al Young’s prose poem “Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons”, we encounter literature and characters with double identities that assist in navigating marginalized adolescents with their own struggles in understanding their mu...
In the story “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan, Mrs. Tan talks about (in the book) her life and how she grew up with different Englishes was very hard and how it has affected her today. The setting of the book goes from being at lecture to the past of Amy Tan and her mother along with the different Englishes she had to come accustomed to. In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, the author’s attitude towards the “different Englishes” she grew up with is fascinated. Amy Tan conveys this attitude through wanting to learn all different kinds of Englishes, her use of Englishes in her novel, and the acceptance she developed of her mother’s broken English.
Lauren Olamina, the protagonist in Parable of the Sower. She lives in the walled town of Robledo, near Southern California in 2024, which is a devastated world caused by the environmental degradation and economic, governmental corruption. Lauren’s father was a Baptist minister, who emphasize Bible based religion and also raising her under an intensely religious belief. Though Lauren admires her father she
Have you ever had something of great value be taken from you and then feeling emotionally empty? In Celia Garth, Gwen Bristow desires to share the important message of Celia Garth’s past to the characters and readers. Memories prove that Celia got through the war and the bells provided a stress free period. Her memories were resembled through the bells of St.Michaels Church. The past demonstrated in Celia’s eyes about the war and what the bells reminded her of.
Yolanda’s upbringing was strictly Catholic and Dominican, and to be suddenly thrust into a new world with new cultures and beliefs leaves Yolanda confused. For the most part, Yolanda cherishes her culture and religion. But when surrounded by Americans who do things differently than her, and feel confident in the way they do things, Yolanda wishes she could be like them: “For the hundredth time, I cursed my immigrant origins. If only I too had been born in Connecticut or Virginia, I too would understand the jokes everyone was making” (Alvarez 94). Yolanda wants to be an American and to understand their ways. Being different from everyone takes a toll on Yolanda’s sense of identity. She is riddled with conflict between who she is and who she wishes she could be. She sees herself as being worse or worth less than the Americans, and has to face this on an everyday
The Essay written by Amy Tan titled 'Mother Tongue' concludes with her saying, 'I knew I had succeeded where I counted when my mother finished my book and gave her understandable verdict' (39). The essay focuses on the prejudices of Amy and her mother. All her life, Amy's mother has been looked down upon due to the fact that she did not speak proper English. Amy defends her mother's 'Broken' English by the fact that she is Chinese and that the 'Simple' English spoken in her family 'Has become a language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk' (36). Little did she know that she was actually speaking more than one type of English. Amy Tan was successful in providing resourceful information in every aspect. This gave the reader a full understanding of the disadvantages Amy and her mother had with reading and writing. The Essay 'Mother Tongue' truly represents Amy Tan's love and passion for her mother as well as her writing. Finally getting the respect of her critics and lucratively connecting with the reaction her mother had to her book, 'So easy to read' (39). Was writing a book the best way to bond with your own mother? Is it a struggle to always have the urge to fit in? Was it healthy for her to take care of family situations all her life because her mother is unable to speak clear English?
In “I Want to Be Miss America,” Julia Alvarez examines her adolescent struggle to be “American.” For Alvarez, her Hispanic culture becomes a burden to her inclusion in American society. So, Alvarez and her sisters, struggle to become what they are not, Americans. Alvarez uses a somewhat biased stereotype to identify the model of an ideal American, but she does make clear. The struggle of all American teenagers to fit into or molded by a standard which for many of them is impossible to achieve.
In the essay "It’s Hard Enough Being Me," Anna Lisa Raya relates her experiences as a multicultural American at Columbia University in New York and the confusion she felt about her identity. She grew up in L.A. and mostly identified with her Mexican background, but occasionally with her Puerto Rican background as well. Upon arriving to New York however, she discovered that to everyone else, she was considered "Latina." She points out that a typical "Latina" must salsa dance, know Mexican history, and most importantly, speak Spanish. Raya argues that she doesn’t know any of these things, so how could this label apply to her? She’s caught between being a "sell-out" to her heritage, and at the same time a "spic" to Americans. She adds that trying to cope with college life and the confusion of searching for an identity is a burden. Anna Raya closes her essay by presenting a piece of advice she was given on how to deal with her identity. She was told that she should try to satisfy herself and not worry about other people’s opinions. Anna Lisa Raya’s essay is an informative account of life for a multicultural American as well as an important insight into how people of multicultural backgrounds handle the labels that are placed upon them, and the confusion it leads to in the attempt to find an identity. Searching for an identity in a society that seeks to place a label on each individual is a difficult task, especially for people of multicultural ancestry.
There’s never been a definite place or culture in which I’ve chosen to found my identity upon. You see America is a wonderfully diverse society, not only in skin-tone, but in culture, religion, and even general cordiality as well. In all its fifty states, I’ve been blessed to have visited thirty-three of them. California was my first. In the summer of 1997 I was born in the town of Bakersfield, the closest drive from my parent’s residence in the Tehachapi desert. I have no