After reading Manguel’s work, I will say I found myself a little lost. However, when I finished my second run through of the work, I understood what the author was attempting to get through to the reader. Manguel forced me to rethink the power contained in reading, along with simply the word “reading”. He essentially is attempting to show the power of choice, as well as, what many are taking for granted, which for the most part I agree with. I did like the presentation of this ideology; Manguel stated his thesis in a way I am not used to, one, which I must search for, instead of being in the typical formula. The work was a unique one that did its job in the sense of forcing the reader to think. Manguel expresses his childhood experience in a manner that gives a different sense as to what reading is. Theses experiences show how he attained a new sense, many experiences at this young age shape, teach, and open the world to us. These basic skills, such as reading, are taken for granted. In today’s society many do not appreciate the simply fact that we were taught how to read and write...
Listening is an important skill that many people take for granted. Listening empathelicay means putting oneself in “someone else’s shoes”. Listening only to get information takes away much of what the speaker is saying, by being able to empathize with someone one is on the same wavelength. In this world, there exist many different cultures and subcultures. In Graciela Limon’s novel, Song of the Hummingbird, Huitzitzilin tells her story as Father Benito listens. She tells Father Benito the native view of what has happened- she tells him things that he has never heard of from his people. Huitzitzilin and Father Benito are products of two different cultures: Aztecs and Spaniards, respectively. Limon portrayed that the Spaniards didn’t even try to understand the Aztecs ways. Limon uses the literary elements of characterization, point of view, and internal conflict to show that in order to understand another culture, one must be able to treat his/her’s history with the same compassion and understanding as if it was their own's.
This poem written by Francisco Alarcon describes the life of an illiterate man who finds himself signing away his freedom by placing his mark on a contract. He is unable to read the contract he is signing or even write his name. Being unable to read he leaves himself vulnerable to be taken advantage of and deceived. Alarcon, who was raised in a Hispanic community, was surrounded by illiteracy. Wanting to change the situation in which he was raised in he went to school to become a teacher and now focuses his efforts on eliminating illiteracy. This poem was written from the experience of watching those he cared about around him being taken advantage of because they were unable to read or write. "The X in My Name" shows the mistakes and ill consequences that illiteracy can bring upon those uneducated. It also sheds light onto how social structure and financial class play into illiteracy, and how detrimental illiteracy can be to those on the low end of the monetary spectrum. Though Alarcon only uses a few words it is easy to understand and see how the illiterate can be effortlessly be taken advantage of.
Even from an early age, Rodriguez is a successful student. Everyone is extremely proud of Rodriguez for earning awards and graduating to each subsequent level of his education. But all his success was not necessarily positive. In fact, we see that his education experience is a fairly negative one. One negative that Rodriguez endures is his solitude. Education compels him to distance himself from his family and heritage. According to Richard Hoggart, a British education theorist, this is a very natural process for a scholarship boy. Hoggart explains that the ?home and classroom are at cultural extremes,? (46). There is especially an opposition in Rodriguez?s home because his parents are poorly educated Mexicans. His home is filled with Spanish vernacular and English filled with many grammatical errors. Also, the home is filled with emotions and impetuosity, whereas the classroom lacks emotion and the teachers accentuate rational thinking and reflectiveness.
All in all Anzaldua's essay is very motivating and “colorful”, due to her utilization of metaphors she uses give the reader gains insight into her writing process, most of all into the process of connecting images and building ideas. However Anzaldua's use of language and style, the transition from English to Spanish and back again in particular, may create confusion for certain readers, who are not familiar with the different
The themes explored in the novel illustrate a life of a peasant in Mexico during the post-revolution, important themes in the story are: lack of a father’s role model, death and revenge. Additionally, the author Juan Rulfo became an orphan after he lost
Jimmy Baca’s story “Coming into Language” describes his emotional childhood and what he went through while in prison. At seventeen Baca still didn’t know how to read or write. Throughout the story, he shares his struggle with language and how prison eventually brought himself to learn how to read and write. Jimmy Baca then uses examples in his story explaining how he admired language and used it to free himself from the cruel world he grew up in.
From the excerpt from the novel, “Under the Feet of Jesus” by Helena Maria Viramontes, the main character is Estrella, a young Spanish girl with a powerful desire to learn to read. Although she is persistent, her teachers refuse to educate her because they are more concerned of Estrella’s personal hygiene. This leaves Estrella resentful because of the barrier between herself and knowledge. Estrella remains silent until a man named Perfecto Flores teaches her how to read by using his expertise in hardware and tools to represent the alphabet. Viramontes depicts the heartfelt growth of Estrella through her use of tone, figurative language, and detail.
He too quickly dismisses the idea of reading on your own to find meaning and think critically about a book. For him, Graff states that “It was through exposure to such critical reading and discussion over a period of time that I came to catch the literary bug.” (26) While this may have worked for Graff, not all students will “experience a personal reaction” (27) through the use of critical discussion. The solution to this seems to be neither giving away answers or lazily doing assigned reading in order to find meaning within the text.
Giants and Angels roam the pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”, and “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World”, creating the perfect scene for magical realism. Many of the elements within these stories coincide with each other; this has everything to do with the overall component of magical realism, which binds together similarities and sets apart differences. The theme of each story can be found within the other and can stand by itself to represent the story it belongs to, the settings are similar in location and the ability to change but different in their downsides and the writing style is so similar it is complicated to find any differences. Marquez is a master story-teller whose works of art can only be compared with each other.
In 1949, Dana Gioia reflected on the significance of Gabriel García Márquez’s narrative style when he accurately quoted, “[it] describes the matter-of-fact combination of the fantastic and everyday in Latin American literature” (Gioia). Today, García Márquez’s work is synonymous with magical realism. In “Un Señor Muy Viejo con Alas Enormes,” the tale begins with be dramatically bleak fairytale introduction:
Literacy in the 21st century is multidimensional with Giroux arguing “Teaching and learning the culture of the book is no longer the staple of what it means to be literate” (Arthur, 2001, p.183).
Baca is no longer a semi illiterate man. He has made the biggest movement in his life. Baca starts reading and writing in his cell. He demonstrates the way he move from an ignorant person to a literate person with a self- confident. Baca indicate in his memoir, “ I might have lost the respect of my peers, but I was feeling a sense of my own worth that I had never felt before. I knew I was no longer a twenty-two-year cold illiterate brown man” (168). Baca, how his strategies of overcoming his difficulties. He endeavors to show his readers that he challenged himself and works hard to be a literate person. Therefore, he becomes a well-known poet. During Baca’s time in prison, he honors his father’s memory. Baca is honoring his father’s death. He feels sad that his father is gone. This shows that Baca still remember his father even though his father was a bad influence in his life. Baca mentions in his memoir, “ I vowed never to let them break me. To honor his memory […] I sincerely wanted to mourn him. He deserved at least that, at least one person on earth to forgive him for all his unfulfilled promises, all the expectations never achieved” (234). Demacio’s death memory is an initiative that Baca has taken to mourn his dad. Baca feels that he needs his father to be next to him at the moment. He established a tone of admonition to what his father has done and his careless life he has lived. Through all those obstacles Baca has lived in his childhood, he enjoys being with his grandparents who love him the most. He has been sent to live with his grandparents at a young age with his siblings. Throughout his childhood, Baca enjoys being around his grandparents who take care of him and his siblings. According Baca’s memoir, “ we lived with grandpa Baca […] I started enjoy living with my grandparents again in Estoncia. With my friends Mocoso, I spent the whole day roaming the village. We crossed fields, played in trees,
The use of Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy in this story is very thought-provoking. While we are presented with the image of a young Richard Rodriguez and his struggle to deal with his education and family life. We are also presented Hoggart’s image of the “Scholarship boy” the student who has ...
Through this essay Richard Rodriguez writes about his experiences as a son, and as a student. Through his relationship with his parents the reader can see how Rodriguez was separating for his
This essay will focus on the relationship between time and human. The book cleverly portrays the characters individually and how they present time through age. Moccondo was distinguished out of the World. In Moccodo, there were some characters that showed how time changed their lives, such as Ursula, Colonel Auroliano Buindia, and Jose Arcadio Buindia. They tried to join the world, but there were some barriers that changed life of them by passing time. The characters were living in a simple life style, but their lives were changed since they got difficulty. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, time has different effects on all the characters due to the different reactions of the characters to the events. This essay will examine