Across a Hundred Mountains Short Essay

In her novel La Linea, Ann Jaramillo tells the story of fifteen-year-old Miguel, who leaves his home in Mexico to illegally cross the US-Mexican border. He leaves for California, where his parents and two of his sisters have lived for the past seven years. His parents left first, in order to make money for their children to cross la linea later. Miguel and his younger sister Elena thus live with their grandmother on a rancho in the small Mexican village San Jacinto. On his fifteenth birthday, Miguel receives the letter he has waited for his entire life. A letter from his father tells him to go see Don Clemente, a rich and successful immigrant smuggler. Don Clemente provides Miguel with

The story describes the experiences of a young women named Cleofilas. She grew up with six brothers and had no mother. So therefore, she learned how to be a woman through watching telenovelas. She believes that to be a woman she only needs to find true love and have a “happily ever after”. Later she meets a man named Juan and they eventually fall in love and get married.

Gloria Anzaldúa writes of a Utopic frame of mind, the borderlands created in and lived in by the new mestiza. She describes the preexisting natures of the Anglos, Mexicanos, and Chicanos as seen around the southwest U.S. / Mexican border, indicative of the nations at large. She also probes the borders of language, sexuality, psychology and spirituality. Anzaldúa presents this information in various identifiable ways including the autobiography, historical/informative essay, and poetry. What is unique to Anzaldúa is her ability to weave a ‘perfect’ kind of compromised state of mind that melds together the preexisting cultures while simultaneously formulating a fusion of genres that stretches previously

Into the beautiful North, by Luis Alberto Urea, is telling a story of a nineteen year old girl called Nayeli who is encourage by the movie “The Magnificent Seven” to go to the United States with her three best friends. Their mission was to cross the border and recruit seven men to save their town, Tres Camarones, from the bandidos. But she also wanted to bring her dad back home. He and the rest of the men of Tres Camarones went to the United States looking for jobs to sustain their family. The author wants to show how undeveloped Mexican towns such as Tres camarones can cause poverty, lidding to one of the biggest topic now days which is immigration. Immigration is a cruel and hard path caused by

In Alvarez’s novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, she explores the lives of four young sisters who are adjusting to a new country and their new lives after feeling a civil-war infested Dominican Republic. The story follows each of the sisters (Yolanda “Yoyo”, Sofia “Fifi”, Carla, and Sandra “Sandi”) as they find their way through a rough new life. Each chapter recounts different stories from each of the girls and describes how they have adjusted to the ever-changing world around them. Along the course of the story, the sisters journey different experiences such as romance, family feuds, drugs, mental illnesses, and much more. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is a wonderful example of the lives of girls struggling through their teenage and young adult years.

She was born in Zacatecas, Salazar. Her mother’s was from Culiacan, Jalisco but born in Tlaltenango in March, 21 of 1921 and her father was born in the same place but May 8. 1923. My abuelita told me that they meet in a chucomeca which is like a ranch in Zacatecas. She had 5 siblings which were 3 brothers named Manuel, Patricio, Filiberto and 2 sisters named Victoria and Hermelina. Her childhood was doing domestic labors and chores around the house, she did attend school but only went for 4 to 5 years then dropped out. While she was in school the clothes she had to use was uniforms which as a girl she had to wear a dress. She told me that in her education that they learned how to respect their elders, family members and themselves. Her family also thought her to take advantage of what they had since she came from a poor family and background.

Julia Alvarez How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is a novel that touches on the cultural acclimation of four young Dominican women. On how the struggle on gaining their own identity in a different culture and develop into womanhood. The four Garcia girls did not share in most of the more typical immigrant experiences due to their wealth they had from back home. Although they did not have a typical background, the Garcia girls story show the struggles of the Dominican immigrants in the United States trying to gain their identity in a different culture. The novel takes readers through a time-reversing journey of the immigrant family and shows the many difficulties they faced with the differences between American and Dominican cultures.

Helena Maria Viramontes explores the cultural barriers and poor working conditions that Mexican migrant farm workers experience. The novel gives the reader a vivid look into the rural San Joaquin Valley through the eyes of Estrella in a further depiction of the lives and conditions of her family and migrant workers around her. Viramontes examines the daily struggle of migrant workers who have no other choice but to live in the labor camps under oppressive and sometimes life threatening conditions just to be afforded basic sustenance. It is seen where on more than one occasion the main character, Estrella, must confront the reality that many living things are suffering around her due to indigence, paired with other sources of distress that are ubiquitous in the impoverished environment.

In Guerrero, Mexico 2014, many children who go to school were hijacked in their busses and attacked. In one senario, the bus was hijacked by the students’ own police and were taken away and were never seen again. People had also been found dead showing signs of torture and punishment. In the novel, the main character tells a story of one survivor of people who had been kidnapped. She showed fear for he friend and how it affected the lives of the people around her. People in the novel and in Guerrero dug holes to

Mexican immigrants had to leave their homes, worked in fields, and travel to a new county.Esperanza Ortega from Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan.Knows these life too well. She started life as a rancher’s daughter and then a tragedy that changes her life by sending her to an immigration camp.Although Esperanza faced many challenges as an immigrant her hardest were not knowing how to do chores and Mom Getting sick with Valley, Fever.

It strikes in the modern world, in Texas, in Northern Mexico. It delves into the darkest recesses of humanity. De Alba presents women as an expendable commodity in Juarez. Prostitution is legal, and women are used up easily and then murdered; left to die in the wastes. De Alba compels the reader to look at themselves to see if they are taking advantage of anyone; not just women.

On a quiet day, long ago, a young girl sat in the field where her father worked. Bianca’s hair was long, dark, and coarse complementing her caramel skin. She sat, eyes closed, taking in the warm June day. The corn, the air and the soft songs that the workers sang in the fields made Bianca smile. “Bianca! cariño! It is time to go Bianca! Andale! ” yells her father from across the fields. She rises to her feet, brushes the red, clay dust off of her shawl, and begins to walk home. She walks hand in hand with her father as the sunset in Veracruz, Mexico sets. As they approach their humble home, the smell of enchiladas and frijoles wash over them. The savory aroma entrances Bianca and her father and as if it were planned a faint “Mmmmmmmm” slips between both of their lips under their breath.

The concepts of U.S- Mexican border, and boarders in general, is the main focus of author Gloria Anzalúda in her publication “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.” In some ways, this book is an autobiography that is written in a stream of consciousness with intertextual poems, songs, and stories. By using such techniques, Anzalúda is able to stress different aspects of living in a ‘borderland’ and also how the role expected of women is extensive and interconnected with the Catholic Church and Mexican cultural norms. In “Signs Preceding the End of the World,” a novel by Yuri Herrera, the main character, a young girl by the name of Makina, who defies the many of the general accepted behaviors for women in Mexico. The entire story revolves around her journey across the United States and Mexican border to find her brother who had gone over many years ago. In her quest she encounters gangsters, smugglers, and law enforcement, all the while leaving behind her life in Mexico. In this paper, I will explain how Makina, as a young woman from Mexico, engages with and contests the gender expectations demonstrated in Anzalúda’s text through the relationships with her boyfriend(s), entering into the places of the gangs, and her behavior towards the people she encounters along her journey.

We also see one example of how women were treated in Mexico during this time period when La Luna’s husband threatened to throw her in the cellar for talking to a strange man on the street. There is also a glimpse of what Mexico was like at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Armed revolutionaries bust into

Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande reveals how Juana changes before reaching the border, arriving in America, and coming back to Mexico; this is seen through the moons representational impact. Through Juana’s journey there was a struggle in each section of her life that she had to go through. Juana grows with every section of her life as more people begin to come into her life. Juana does not know it but as people come into her life she too helps them out. Juana started off determined to find her father then along the way she begins to open up, but cautiously. Juana could have succumbed to tragedy, but she did not by going through many hardships in order for her family’s closure and her own. Juana was prey in the beginning of the book,