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Narrative essay of immigration
Narrative essay of immigration
Narrative essay of immigration
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PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL BORDERS IN THE NOVEL
Into the beautiful North, by Luis Urea, is a story of a young girl who together with her three best friends went to the United States. The story begins with a group of bandidos (drug dealers and corrupt police) harassing people in a village in Mexico called Tres Comarones. All the men in the village had gone to the United States to look for jobs. The mission of the young girl’s trip was to cross the border and recruit men to save their town, Tres Camarones from the bandidos. Nayeli, the young girl, also wanted to bring her dad home from the United States. Her dad had crossed borders to the United States to look for jobs in order to sustain the family. The author depicts both physical and psychological borders throughout the novel. The border runs down the middle of me,” Luis Urea, the son of a New York socialite and a Mexican cop, once claimed. Some of the borders act as permanent barriers were others were easily crossed. The author repeatedly shows that physical borders can be crossed but the psychological barriers are more difficult to bridge.
The author describes the many tensions that affect people on both sides of the borders. Luis Urea shows the effect of migration on the families left behind and also the reality of immigrants’ life in the
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Kankakee was a small town outside of Chicago from which Nayeli's father had last sent a postcard. They departed as the rest of the group organized a group of homesick Mexican men who responded to their call for warriors. Tacho and Nayeli's journey across the west was one of nonstop marvels and increasing disillusionment. Their perceptions of the United States was dissolved into frequent bafflement with the strange and ridiculous realities. The division between the two worlds contracted and expanded over and over as they witnessed America and interacted with
Many of the people trying to cross the border were not given same luck. Their efforts to leave the situations they are in only cause them a different kind of pain. The lack of safety for these people was astonishing. As Jessie was, I was impressed by Anazulda’s description of living there and the realistic depiction of how it was to live there. As Natalie put, I also loved the realistic writing that Anazulda brought to this piece. She did not try to ease the tone or make it lighter than the reality of the situations. She brought the realness of what happened there to life in her writing, which I greatly admire. The imagery that Brooke points out from Borderlands from page 2 is such a clear image of being trapped within a place you cannot escape from. While I had not thought of the curtains in such a way, I understand the reasoning behind it. Curtains are supposed to provide privacy, shelter from the outside world. Yet, these steel curtains are prisons, keeping those near them from getting away. As Jessie pointed out, the United States is governed to protect the rights of each American citizen, including each of us. Nevertheless, Anazulda and many others who try to cross the border can be subjected to the rules of those who live near the borders and not the laws of the United States that are in place to protect them. I did not think about the call for unity as Natalie described until I read her essay. While she does not make light of the situations caused in the United States, she does leave this impression of hope that we can fix this. We can make it so these borders are less of walls that divide us, and we can make the journey in our country a less terrible and horrifying
The book, “Y no se lo trago la tierra” by Thomas River grasp a point of view of a migrant community, as manifestations of Chicano culture, language, and experience as understood by a first person point of a young male protagonist. The setting of the book takes place of a year during the 1950s and uses a variety of perspectives and voices to follow the boy’s passages into adolescence. As the setting of the book moves from Texas to upper Midwest to the ye...
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.
It involved the analysis of data from 90,000 individual surveys conducted by the Mexican Migration Project to establish the presence of social effects, and the analysis of qualitative data from 120 in-depth interviews with migrants and their family members in Mexico to reveal the underlying mechanisms. Firstly, it confirmed the hypothesis that “having prior migrants in the household or community increases individuals’ likelihood of migrating net of economic and political context effects” (2013:19). Secondly, through its qualitative research, it found that tough immigration policies among other things, reduce communication channels between migrants in the United States and their families in Mexico. The flow on impact of this is a break down in the feedback loop on what is often, a hard life as a migrant in the United States. Within the context of increased restrictions on border crossings, Garip and Asad (2013) argue that restricting these communication channels simply acts to perpetuate the myth of a glamorous life in the United
In a country full of inequities and discriminations, numerous books were written to depict our unjust societies. One of the many books is an autobiography by Richard Wright. In Black Boy, Wright shares these many life-changing experiences he faced, which include the discovery of racism at a young age, the fights he put up against discriminations and hunger, and finally his decision of moving Northward to a purported better society. Through these experiences which eventually led him to success, Wright tells his readers the cause and effect of racism, and hunger. In a way, the novel The Tortilla Curtain by T.C Boyle illustrates similar experiences. In this book, the lives of two wealthy American citizens and two illegal immigrants collided. Delaney and Kyra were whites living in a pleasurable home, with the constant worry that Mexicans would disturb their peaceful, gated community. Candido and America, on the other hand, came to America to seek job opportunities and a home but ended up camping at a canyon, struggling even for cheapest form of life. They were prevented from any kind of opportunities because they were Mexicans. The differences between the skin colors of these two couples created the hugest gap between the two races. Despite the difficulties American and Candido went through, they never reached success like Wright did. However, something which links these two illegal immigrants and this African American together is their determination to strive for food and a better future. For discouraged minorities struggling in a society plagued with racism, their will to escape poverty often becomes their only motivation to survive, but can also acts as the push they need toward success.
For thousands of years people have left their home country in search of a land of milk and honey. Immigrants today still equate the country they are immigrating to with the Promised Land or the land of milk and honey. While many times this Promised Land dream comes true, other times the reality is much different than the dream. Immigration is not always a perfect journey. There are many reasons why families immigrate and there are perception differences about immigration and the New World that create difficulties and often separate generations in the immigrating family. Anzia Yezierska creates an immigration story based on a Jewish family that is less than ideal. Yezierska’s text is a powerful example of the turmoil that is created in the family as a result of the conflict between the Old World and the New World.
Whether in the Old World of community, familial relationships and traditional values, or in the New World of non-traditional relationships, individualism and uncertainty, the struggle for survival predominates the immigrant narrative. Religious and racial intolerance, social upheaval, economic hardship, and political turmoil underscore the causes of emigration, but the New world was far from idyllic, and traces of these scourges checkered the landscape of the New World as well as the Mother land.
Martinez, Oscar. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1994), 232.
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.
This Hispanic film titled "Under The Same Moon” makes a connection about the difficulties the Latino community must undergo without losing their values and traditions in order to provide for their families that were left behind. In addition, this film reproduces some of the complications my ancestors went through when they made the most difficult decision to migrate to the United State in a quest for a better life. It is not easy to decide to abandon your home country, customs and, most importantly, your family in a pursuit of a more stable daily pay rate. All this work hard to provide for the loved ones who stay behind waiting for their return. Despite the challenging, they faced they decide to cross the border until they reached the destination
The struggle to find a place inside an un-welcoming America has forced the Latino to recreate one. The Latino feels out of place, torn from the womb inside of America's reality because she would rather use it than know it (Paz 226-227). In response, the Mexican women planted the seeds of home inside the corral*. These tended and potted plants became her burrow of solace and place of acceptance. In the comfort of the suns slices and underneath the orange scents, the women were free. Still the questions pounded in the rhythm of street side whispers. The outside stare thundered in pulses, you are different it said. Instead of listening she tried to instill within her children the pride of language, song, and culture. Her roots weave soul into the stubborn soil and strength grew with each blossom of the fig tree (Goldsmith).
Humans have a never ending thirst for a better life, and a better existence for themselves and those they hold dear. Jose Antonio Vargas was sent away from the Philippines by his mother hoping that he would be able to achieve a better life, and be happy. In “Outlaw: My Life in America as an Undocumented Immigrant” Vargas is able to find his better life and happiness in America but also fear and anxiety. Vargas gives us a look into the life of an illegal immigrant the good, the bad, their achievements and their constant struggles. Very much like Vargas my father immigrated to America, but legally in 1986.
Jose Antonio Vargas’s article on My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant is a writing about his childhood journey from the Philippines to the United States as an Undocumented Immigrant. Vargas writes this article to emphasize the topic of immigrant and undocumented immigrant in the United States. He uses all three appeals: pathos, ethos, and logic in his writing, in specific, he mostly uses pathos throughout of his entire article with a purpose for the reader to sympathize and to feel compassion for him. The use of these appeals attract many readers, they can feel and understand his purpose is to ask for others to join and support other people who undocumented immigrant like himself. In addition, it gives other undocumented immigrant people courage
Bestseller journalist, Sonia Nazario, in her literacy non-fiction, Enrique’s Journey, describes a young man’s journey trying to reconcile with his mother in the United States, but has to go through many obstacles to reach her. Nazario’s purpose is to inform readers about how immigration affects children and their mothers in Central America. She adopts an optimistic/determined tone in order to reveal to her readers the difficulty and bravery the children have to face to get to the United States. Nazario begins her credibility with ethos to retrace an abandon teenager’s journey through Central America, pathos to follow the mother son relationship, and logos by giving facts and statistics for illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Bass, Randall. "Borders as Barriers: Otherness and Difference." Bordertexts: Cultural Readings for Contemporary Writers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 205-210.