Exactly one week after graduating from high school, with thirteen years of American education behind me, I boarded a plane and headed for a Caribbean island, I had fifteen days to spend on an island surrounded with crystal blue waters, white sandy shores and luxurious ocean resorts. With beaches to play on by day and casinos to play in during the night, I was told that this country was an exciting new tourist destination. My days in the Dominican Republic, however, were not filled with snorkeling lessons and my nights were not spent at the black jack table. Instead of visiting the ritzy East Coast, I traveled inland to a mountain community with no running water and no electricity. The bus ride to this town called Guayabal, was long, hot and uncomfortable. The mountain roads were not paved and the bus had no air conditioning. Surprisingly, the four-hour ride flew by. I had plenty to think about as my mind raced with thoughts of the next two weeks. I wondered if my host family would be welcoming, if the teenagers would be friendly, and if my work would be hard. I mentally prepared myself for life with out the everyday luxuries of a flushing toilet, a hot shower, and a comfortable bed. Because Guayabal was with out such basic commodities, I did not expect to see many reminders of home. I thought I was going to leave behind my American ways and immerse myself into another culture. These thoughts filled my head as the bus climbed the rocky hill towards Guayabal. When I finally got off the bus and stepped into the town-square, I realized that I had thought wrong: there was no escaping the influence of the American culture.
In a way, Guayabal was an example of what author Mary Louise Pratt refers to as a contact zone. Pratt defines a contact zone as "a place where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power" (Pratt 76). In Guayabal, American culture and American consumerism were clashing with the Hispanic and Caribbean culture of the Dominican Republic. The clash came from the Dominicans' desire to be American in every sense, and especially to be consumers of American products. This is nearly impossible for Dominicans to achieve due to their extreme poverty. Their poverty provided the "asymmetrical relation of power" found in contact zones, because it impeded not only the Dominican's ability to be consumers, but also their ability to learn, to work, and to live healthily.
Junot Diaz is Dominican American, and he came from a very poor family with five other siblings. Since they were not that wealthy, they lived in a simple way. Even though his mother was basically the bread winner of the family since his father could not keep a job, she still manages to send money back home every six months or so. When they got home from their vacation, they had found out that someone has broken into their house and stole most of his mother’s money. It was easy for them to be a target because they were recent immigrant, and in their neighborhood cars and apartment were always getting jacked. His mother was very upset; she blamed her children, because she thought it was their friends who had done such a thing. “We kids knew where
get older they start to realize what is really going on in the Dominican Republic. This book takes you
“Jamaica’s a country of great dichotomy. On the one hand you have a tourist industry with great beaches and resorts, but on the other you have such great poverty and the violence that goes along with that.”(Michael Franti) In this paper, I will talk about the geography, the history of Jamaica, the people that live there now and that lived there in the past, the lifestyle of the society, and the society, like the government and economy.
The Dominican Republic is a country appealing to the Haitians, because that is the nearest to them and can have better quality of life. But, in recent years we have seen a massive immigration from Haiti to Dominican Republic. These leads us to ask, what are the reasons which the people of Haiti are fleeing their country. These factors are: to escape of the poverty, deficiency of basic services and lack of jobs. Due to the scarcity of resources, lack of access to basic services and lack of job opportunities, many haitian families have been used as a defense mechanism traditional your transfer to the Dominican Republic to have access to health care services, public schools or work in the agricultural
I remember the first time I came to America; I was 10 years old. Everything was exciting! From getting into an airplane, to viewing magnificent, huge buildings from a bird’s eye view in the plane. It was truly memorable. After staying few days at my mother’s house, my father and I wanted to see what Dallas looks like. But because my mother was working the whole day, it wasn’t convenient for her to show us the area except only on Sundays. Finally, we went out to the nearby mall with my mother. My father and I were astonished after looking at a variety of stores. But after looking at different stores, we were finally tired and hungry, so we went into McDonald’s. Not being familiar with fast food restaurants, we were curious to try American
During Gregory’s ethnographic research in the Dominican Republic, he encounters many individuals, some tourists, others expatriates, as well as citizens native to the island. One individual by the name of Minaya, discusses changes in the sugar cane industry. In 1988 he became a worker at a sugar mill that his uncle owned, but claimed that the industry became “Capitalized” (Gregory 2007: 15). He explains this capitalization as the industry being leased out to private corporations, which incurred poor working conditions and minimal wages upon the laborers. Minaya also expresses the fact he has no formal education, a big factor...
The novel ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’, by Junot Diaz gives a very entertaining insight towards many social dynamics that are relevant to Dominican culture, and it fits very well within the scope of the course; and, although it is a work of fiction, this novel is set in New Jersey, and deals specifically with the Dominican Republic experience under the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. From what I’ve learned after reading the first half of this book, there is certainly a lot that can be discussed. Thankfully the book’s versatile portrayal of vivid topics that are seldom discussed shine light upon these many issues that face such an overlooked culture, especially for the American audience.
Shirley Temple. When the name is uttered an image of the dimpled faced, curly haired, tap dancing four year old from the 1930s automatically appears in everyone's mind. She was the child actress of the depression era, winning over the hearts and pocket books of many. Films, dolls and even a drink named after her, her face and name were ones that couldn't be missed. She was Fox's gem and saviour. She was an escape from the hard life. She was a star. The image that she gave off, of love for the needy and pure optimism, must have had an origin. Did it rise from the social needs of the public to escape the depression or was it purely constructed by Twentieth Century-Fox? Her image clearly correlates with the mentality of the public at the time, but Fox must have had a hand. Undoubtedly her image was created through a mixture of both elements.
Foley, Eric. Cultures of the World Dominican Republic. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1995. Print.
Shirley Temple Black was easily the most popular and famous child star of all time. She got her start in the movies at the age of three and soon progressed to super stardom. Shirley could do it all: act, sing and dance and all at the age of five! Fans loved her as she was bright, bouncy and cheerful in her films and they ultimately bought millions of dollars worth of products that had her likeness on them. Dolls, phonograph records, mugs, hats, dresses, whatever it was, if it had her picture on there they bought it. Shirley was box-office champion for the consecutive years 1935 to 1938, beating out such great grown-up stars as Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Robert Taylor, and many more. By 1939, her popularity declined. Although she starred in some
...spoke a Spanish Creole. This made a clear distinction between the two and made it easy for the government to identify the difference. The reader sees how such themes of Birth and Death show so prominently throughout the characters that one must focus on how birth and deaths affect the concept of the individual relating to their own Negritude. It is culture, not skin tones but rather the beliefs and values that each country be it Haiti or Dominican Republic relate to. Danticat’s novel helps us understand the strengths and limits that Rene Depestre states in The Birth of Caribbean Civilisation “there is a progressive ‘negritude’ that expounds the need to rise above all the alienations of man . . . and there is “an irrational reactionary and mystic version of ‘negritude’ which serves . . . as a cultural base for neo-colonialist penetration into our countries” (244).
Once Shirley Temple Black retired in 1950 from the silver screens she became heavily involved in politics. This is where she flourished and made a huge positive impact on society.
Shirley Jackson grew up in a home like any other normal middle-class family. She lived with both of her parents in Burlington, California. Growing up, Shirley had a lot of tense relations with her parents, but mostly with her mother. Leslie Jackson, Shirley’s mother, set high standards for Shirley by the ways she was perceived by society and social norms. Shirley always seemed to disappoint her mother. The emotionally tearing and psychologically damaging relationship with her mother escalated to the point where her mother even told her she wished she had aborted Shirley. Roberta Rubenstein makes a great point in her work: House Mothers and Haunted Daughters: Shirley Jackson and Female Gothic, of the mental stress her mother put on her as a child that carried on throughout her life. Rubenstein says, “Throughout her life, Shirley was distressed by her mother’s profound insensitivity to her actual personality, combined with persistent attempts to control her unconven...
The Westerner referring most commonly to those that are of European descent see the island of Jamaica, to be exotic, a place of wonder and discovery, which is why they decided to settle in hopes of exploring this unknown territory to find adventure just as Edward Said described in Latent and Manifest Orientalism. To this day modern westerners, tourists, have the same mentality that Said described when they travel to Jamaica, they see it as a place to of adventure, a vacation from the boredom and stress that they have experienced back home. What tourists do not realize is that they are able to experience this adventure at the expense of other people’s hard work and labor, which is the Natives daily life. These people may bask all day in what the tourist thinks they enjoy the...
The. Chambers, Donna, Daye, Marcella, Roberts, and Sherma Roberts. The “Introduction” is the “Introduction”. New Perspectives on Caribbean Tourism. Ed. New York: Routledge, 2008.