Ruth Behar published an autobiographical essay “Juban America” in the journal Poetic Today in 1995 about the Juban identity, an ethnic group of Jews and Cuban. Behar makes strategies choices by integrating purpose, context, audience, and visual design that prove the existence of the Juban indentity. Behar is an anthropologist and writer that published an autobiographical essay about the existence of Juban identity. Behar uses personal testimony, family anecdote, and context to prove her purpose in her autobiographical narrative essay. Behar keeps her purpose by giving to the American audience evidence about the Juban identity. The visual image proves that she is attaching to her roots, and that evidence proves the Juban identity exists. …show more content…
Her grandfather arrived to Cuba in 1924. According to Behar: “He was one among thousands of Jews from Southern and Eastern Europe who were fleeing the legacy of pogroms and….the collapse of the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires, when the rise of nationalist ideologies increasingly threatened, and undermined, Jewish life”(Behar 154). Her family was forced to leave Europe because of the political problems they were having. The Cuban revolution was another problem that forced their family to left Cuba in 1961 to travel to the United States. Although, their family practice the Jew’s religion they were open to live in both culture. According to Behar: “My great-grandfather, the only truly practicing Jew on my mother’s side of the family, was highly respected both for his knowledge of the Torah and for his unwillingness to force his religious views on others” (Behar 159). Behar proves how the Juban identity was able to keep the Jews tradition religion and willing to live the new culture in
Racial discrimination is an ongoing reality in the lives of many Hispanics. Being a minority and living in poverty is tough. Hispanics have not always been very welcomed in America; they face challenges getting jobs, and being socially accepted. My Beloved World is a memoir by Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor grew up in a very poor neighborhood. She was diagnosed at the age of eight with diabetes, which was very dangerous because of the lack of technology. Her father died when she was very young, yet she is still successful. She is the first Latina Justice of the Supreme Court. Despite the challenges in her life, Sotomayor is driven, independent, and intelligent.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is the first woman director of planning policy at the State Department and the president and CEO of the New America Foundation. She has taught at two of the most prestige schools in the country Princeton and Harvard Law. She is also the author and editor of several books, but the most recent one is called “The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World which was published in the year 2007. Slaughters essay is about trying to balance home life and work life, and it first appeared in the Atlantic in July/August 2012 issue and was also on the Huffington Post. This essay argues that women in high power jobs and government positions can have both a work life and also keep their home life. She started her essay with a little information on background about her job.
the religion was divided one Jewish parent and one Catholic parent as were shown in the interview with
In order to obtain religious, social, political, and equality 23 million Jews immigrated to America during the years between 1880 and 1920 (Chametzky, 5). Anzia Yezierska wrote about her experiences as a poor immigrant in her fictional work becoming a voice of the Jewish people in the1920s. She struggled to obtain an education that allowed her to rise above her family’s poverty and gain a measure of autonomy. Rachel and Sara, the female protagonists, mirror the author’s life going from struggling immigrant to college graduate. Yezierska uses her own experiences to portray the Jewish immigrant experience with a woman’s perspective. She successfully gained a commercial following that allowed her to mediate the cultural differences between the mainstream culture and the Jewish people that helped resolve differences between the established Americans and these new immigrants for a time (Ebes...
During the process of reading this compilation of works, Portrait of America, many different point of views were aired. The opinion or attitude on the subject was too tainted. The authors were very biased to their perception of the "story". This book could have been much more beneficial if the facts would have stayed to the straight and narrow. Only the detrimental facts needed to be applied to these chapters. For a history class, as broad as this, this book opened too many doors that could not be explained in as much detail as would be liked. Many of the authors enjoyed mentioning the most scandalous moments of the people's lives then dropped the fact without much support or follow through as to what happened to cause or end these events. Brief summaries only tease the mind, and with the course load of most students, there is hardly extra time to investigate the matter further in detail. For a class such as History 152, biographies and/or documentary style books are more worth the while of the student. For instance make a list of a selection of novels that could be read for the class, so that every student can then explore in depth what that student thinks is interesting. Although the book was teasing in nature the chapters did flow well and were easy to read. The procession of the chapters had wonderful transition as to not loose the student. While proceeding through this book there were several different reoccurring topics that appeared. This paper will discuss these two reoccurring topics: the civil rights movement and former presidents.
Sinclair's novel is meant to entirely reject the capitalist system and to bring in its place a socialist system. In this novel, capitalism and its exploitation of the immigrants and other workers, are in fact shown to be tools of the capitalist bosses, used as another means to control and mislead them. In Sinclair's novel the broken dreams of Jurgis Rudkis and his fellow Lithuanian immigrants, unions are meant to be institutions which give false hope to the workers. They live in utterly dreadful circumstances and are exploited like animals by their capitalist bosses. The women are forced to work at an inhuman pace, lose money if they cannot, and then fired if the complain. (106). And the men in the packinghouses like slaves in hell. When Jurgis is lucky enough to be picked for work, he finds working conditions to hardly fitting of the American Dream for which he left his native Lithuania. Sinclair is relentless in providing page after page of detailed horrors the immigrants faced everyday at work, "there were the beef luggers who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerators cars, a fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years.......of..... al those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb (101).
What constructs one’s interpretation of the truth more strongly: culture or personal experiences? For Michael Behar, author of “The Selling of the Last Savage,” the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Are you part of a community and you don’t even know it? A community is a feeling of fellowship with others because one shares common attitudes, interests, and goals. In the remix text “It Takes a Tribe” David Berreby talks about how college students make “tribes” within their school and tribes against other schools. This text relates to my community because the One Direction fandom could be considered a “tribe” full of fans who are against other fandoms of other artists because they all think they 're the best.One direction is a very popular boy band thats known all over the world and very successful. This community meets everywhere , concerts, schools, and social media etc., since one directions fans are everywhere .In the One Direction
The poem “America” by Tony Hoagland reflects on how peoples’ minds are clouded by small-scale items, money, and the unimportance of those items. Metaphors and imagery are utilized to emphasize the unimportance of materialistic items in America. How America is being flooded with unnecessary goods. The poem uses examples of people to create an example and connection to the overall meaning.
My cultural identity, is Haitian American. My parents come from a country of beautiful landscape and valleys of the hidden treasures of knowledge, diverse people, and rustic towns. My parents walked up steep plateaus for water, laid in grassy plains for peace, and dive into the sea for cooling in Haiti’s humid heat. Although, I come from a culture of deep history, the first country to gain independence in the result of a successful slave rebellion, my parents knew the plague of suffering Haiti’s battle with will not recover through the poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy. As Haiti fought through its demons, my parents fought to provide plentiful opportunity for their family and immigrated to the United States of America.
In “The Closing of the American Book,” published in the New York Times Magazine, Andrew Solomon argues about how the decline of literary reading is a crisis in national health, politics, and education. Solomon relates the decline of reading with the rise of electronic media. He believes that watching television and sitting in front of a computer or a video screen instead of reading can cause the human brain to turn off, and lead to loneliness and depression. He also argues that with the decrease of reading rates, there will no longer be weapons against “absolutism” and “terrorism,” leading to the United States political failure in these battles. The last point Solomon makes is that there is no purpose behind America being one of the most literate societies in history if people eradicate this literacy, and so he encourages everyone to help the society by increasing reading rates and making it a “mainstay of community.” Solomon tries to show the importance of reading in brain development and he encourages people to read more by emphasizing the crisis and dangers behind the declination of reading.
Throughout my life, I've heard many different stories about my family. Because of these stories, I know about my background, and they have helped form my identity. Randall Bass, professor of English at Georgetown University, agrees that stories help shape people's identities. Bass states that, "Individuals derive their sense of identity from their culture, and cultures are systems of belief that determine how people live their lives" (Bass 1). Cultural stories about family history, religion, nationality, and heritage help influence people's behavior and beliefs. Identities of different people come from their cultures. Story telling begins at home. Stories help connect people to their systems of beliefs. They sculpt people's lives by giving them a model of how to live. People receive their earliest knowledge from different stories.(Bass)
Knott , Kim, and Seán McLoughlin, eds. Diasporas Concepts, Intersections, Identities. New York : Zed Books, 2010. Print.
Xu, Ben. Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. An excerpt from MELEUS, Vol. 19, No.1 (Spring 1994). 1994. The Society for Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 5 May 2010.
Joyce, James. "Araby." 1914. Literature and Ourselves. Henderson, Gloria, ed. Boston, Longman Press. 2009. 984-988.