A Worker From The Vineyards

Every establishment that she applies would rather hire her as a waitress because she is white and speaks English. When applying to Hearthside, Ehrenreich even downgrades herself in order to attain a job as a housekeeper. “I mutter about being woefully out of practice as a waitress, but he’s already on to the uniform” (Ehrenreich, 16). However, even though the author attempts to prove she would not make a good waitress, her employer is already stubborn and thinks that she is more worthy as a server as opposed to a housekeeper. So why did her boss make her a waitress when she clearly wanted to be a housekeeper? Her boss made her a waitress simply, because he used stereotypes to judge the author. Therefore, her boss only saw a white woman who was better equipped with serving skills even though Ehrenreich believed she had better housekeeping skills. Now, sadly if a fluent English speaking Hispanic applied to the same job, she would only be hired as a housekeeper. In fact, she would be rejected as a waitress for the same reason that the author couldn’t become a housekeeper; the of color her skin. In today’s society, when someone thinks of a hotel maid, they think of a Latin woman who isn’t fluent in English. It is this very stereotype that affects the type of job a low-wage job a person receives simply because of the color of their skin and not their personal abilities.

Jurgis’ family was duped by being roped into “buying” a house and “Then, with a horrible sinking of the heart, Teta Elzbieta unlocked her bureau and brought out the paper that had already caused them so many agonies”(pg 69). They realized that they had been fooled and they need to pay interest on top of what they already were paying as well. The realization of what happened to them is devastating because it was happening to so many other immigrants that were actually living in the United States. Sinclair uses a real life example in the book to better personify that the immigrants are smart enough to start figuring out how to function without the interpreters or translators beside them. They were grasping the concept of “maybe they should better attention” or “should of waited until they learned the language better”. Or in the case of working conditions they were figuring out how they should proceed. One of Marija’s female coworkers “had read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage”(110). They came to realization that they were being harshly mistreated and they knew that they had to do something about it. Sinclair showed how the immigrants used their resources from a book they read and proceeded to act upon it. This also showed how being America is

The subject of my interview was Juan Chavay. He was born and raised in small village close to the mountains. The actual name was not mentioned by Juan, but he emphasized on a small, remote village. He came to America in 2009 and has been here since. He is currently trying to achieve citizenship, but is encountering problems with actually achieving it. He has since been here on a work visa, which allows him to stay in the US for an extended period of time. He says he will continue the work he is doing in Mississippi.

I find it interesting that while Rodriguez and Anzaldua came from comparable backgrounds they feel very differently about similar issues. Rodriguez believes that education should not be bilingual for children who come from Spanish speaking homes. Anzaldua on the other hand thinks that people should not be squashing the culture of these people, and should do what they can to help them preserve it. I think that in that sense one could compare Anzaldua and Rodriguez to the idea of American culture, as each are one extreme of how we view it. On the one hand we have Anzaldua, the idea that America is a melting pot, combining all of the different cultures of the different people living here to come up

From the start, organizers of the grape boycott aimed at using non-violence to gain the patronage of consumers. In the Proclamation of the Grape Worker, Dolores Huerta states, “We mean to have our peace, and to win it without violence, for it is violence we would overcome-the subtle spiritual and mental violence of oppression, the violence subhuman toil does to the human body”(Huerta). In other words, growers although wrong, often exhibited violence to scare insubordinate workers into complying, yet farmworkers would not succumb to the same wrong by using violence. The most compelling evidence of the violence used against farm workers is described in a new article written by Andrea Castillo. Castillo interviews song writer Augustin Lira, who

Similarly to Antonia’s experience, the Hired Girls in town also experience success due to their ardent work ethic and determination to overcome the adversity of which their Anglo-Saxon counterparts were not subject to. Upon moving into town, Jim notices various differences between the native born girls and the Hired Girls, with the immigrants completing the service tasks which the privileged sons and daughters of merchants refused to accept, thinking it was beneath them. The

Fannia Cohn too had a similar experience. Though she came from a middle class background, Orleck points out that Cohn “…realized that if [she] wanted to really understand the workers, [she] should experience the life of a worker in a shop”. She took a position in the “white goods” trade which Orleck describes as, “…particularly hard to organize”. This was a result of the nature of the “white goods” trade being run out of small sweatshops where the work required little skill and the workers, most of whom were under 15 years old, were from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Therefore Orleck notes, “…it was difficult for them to communicate with each other, let alone organize”. However, with Cohn’s particular set of skills, which included fluency in 3 languages and a high school education, many of the girls in the shop looked up to her as a mother figure. Using these skills, Cohn and some select other women began to operate as mentors to the sweat shop girls, providing an education which was so highly valued in their culture and upbringing, which these girls could not attain though normal avenues.

The "Public and Private Language", by Richard Rodriguez and "Mother Tongue", by Amy Tan are great examples of how two immigrant families can have their similarities and differences. For a long time, the American people have looked at immigrants through their own eyes and perspectives. Never do people think to change gears and walk in the footsteps of a stranger. In this case, people need to look through the eyes of an immigrant and see that one immigrant family is not the same as the other. The different people may have connections with the same or different cultures, however, they have different obstacles and hardships with adjusting to a new way of living.

The main character of both the articles were bound to face serious impact on their life due to immigration. Belle Yang, the main character of The Language of Dreams, had to discover about her mesmerizing culture at the age of twenty-six. She had immigrated to the United States at the age of seven (pp 697) which resulted her to incline more to the American culture rather than her own Chinese culture. On the contrary, Josseline, the main character of Death of Josseline, had to pay off the cost of immigration with her life. It was during her illegal travel that she felt sick and was unable to continue her journey. Her brother had begged her to stay with him, but being the big sister, she insisted him to go. She told him to keep going and get to mom (pp 705). She stayed strong until she could not anymore and finally gave up her life.

Joe had hired the two supervisors during the early spring after interviewing a number of applicants. Both were young (23 and 24), from the city, and had degrees in agricultural management from Penn State, but had not known each other previously.

In some instances, individuals feel that they were not hired due to race, gender, age, if she is over 40, disability or religion. (EEOC 2010) This may or may not be the situation in Nancy’s case. To ensure that Nancy

In the article, How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua describes how a person is judge based on the speak they have. The people that have English or other languages as a second language are more likely to speak a different way. Therefore, people make fun other those who cannot pronounces words right. Those people are the one that do more have a harder time speaking to people with can lead to mental trauma. These people tend to lose their identity to please others that are persuading them to speak the American language. The author discusses how people that have their second language be the common language is harder to get work that pays good. The author has experience this kind of thing where we are judged base on the way you speak a language.

We need diversity in every organization. I can totally relate to both cases coming from Ligua's situation as an immigrant like us compared to Mary as a caucasian white and privileged. The country we were living in, is a foundation of immigrants, who strive hard to better their life and achieve their dreams. The case studies Ligua's and Mary explains reality and its not a fiction. On the other hand, Michael could blend in everywhere he goes since his country of origin is unidentifiable and he use this to his advantage. The lesson i learn form differentiating each case would contribute towards my management skills and one day I can use this to help manage my followers.

The second topic that we both actually wanted to talk about was the wages of workers. He was sure to let me know that Americans have it great with the minimum wage law, because in Mexico they have no such law. I asked him when he worked in Mexico how much he got paid and he said "I worked at the same job for the same company for 10 years and my maximum pay was $6.50, but when I started I got $.50 an hour". He also said that when he was chose to come work in the fields all over America that he was getting paid on commission because since he was not an actual American resident he could not get minimum wage. "I work as hard as I could and went as fast as I could to pick all I could to send the money back home where it was needed" Hector said.

Munoz's and Anzuldua's stories were similar, both discussing the impact of languages on themselves, but went into depth in different