Analysis Of Aura

Through the use of pathos, schemes, and tropes, Rodriquez offers his conflicting feelings about California and Mexico. By contrasting Mexico and California with these styles of writing, he sets up

You can see how Maria’s El Salvador is empty of people, full only of romantic ideas. Jose Luis’s image of El Salvador, in contrast, totally invokes manufactured weapons; violence. Maria’s “self-projection elides Jose Luis’s difference” and illustrates “how easy it is for the North American characters, including the big-hearted María, to consume a sensationalized, romanticized, or demonized version of the Salvadoran or Chicana in their midst” (Lomas 2006, 361). Marta Caminero-Santangelo writes: “The main thrust of the narrative of Mother Tongue ... continually ... destabilize[s] the grounds for ... a fantasy of connectedness by emphasizing the ways in which [Maria’s] experience as a Mexican American and José Luis’s experiences as a Salvadoran have created fundamentally different subjects” (Caminero-Santangelo 2001, 198). Similarly, Dalia Kandiyoti points out how Maria’s interactions with José Luis present her false assumptions concerning the supposed “seamlessness of the Latino-Latin American connection” (Kandiyoti 2004, 422). So the continual misinterpretations of José Luis and who he really is and has been through on Maria’s part really show how very far away her experiences as a middle-class, U.S.-born Chicana are from those of her Salvadoran lover. This tension and resistance continues throughout their relationship.

In his essay Bajadas, Francisco Cantu explores the physical and emotional landscapes that shift during his time as a United States border control agent. He candidly writes about his experiences, using imagery to describe the physical landscape of New Mexico in a way that mirrors his own emotional landscape and answers the question that he grapples with most. Cantu writes, “There are days when I feel I am becoming good at what I do. And then I wonder, what does it mean to be good at this? I wonder sometimes how I might explain certain things…” (7). This important question is what drives Bajadas; it is what compels Cantu to write so vulnerably. Through a journal-like structure, Cantu details what his job requires of him and the way he treats

Some Americans remember where they came from; others don’t. That’s the case in Daniel Chacon’s story “The Biggest City in the World”. It is a story about Harvey Gomez who is a Mexican American young man whose grandparents migrated to the Unites States from Mexico. Harvey has only been to Mexico once in his entire life and neither of his parents has ever been there before. Therefore he doesn’t know anything about his native culture or language. In this story Harvey travels deep inside of Mexico for the first time with his Mexican history Professor David P. Rogstart and gets exposed to its culture and language. On the contrary, Carolina

     The author of Mexican Lives, Judith Adler Hellman, grapples with the United States’ economic relationship with their neighbors to the south, Mexico. It also considers, through many interviews, the affairs of one nation. It is a work held to high esteem by many critics, who view this work as an essential part in truly understanding and capturing Mexico’s history. In Mexican Lives, Hellman presents us with a cast from all walks of life. This enables a reader to get more than one perspective, which tends to be bias. It also gives a more inclusive view of the nation of Mexico as a whole. Dealing with rebel activity, free trade, assassinations and their transition into the modern age, it justly

On the surface, Fuentes' Aura is a very strange and eerie book. It draws you in and keeps you there, forcing you to read the book to its very end. Just below the surface, a world of symbolism, words and parallels lead to a greater understanding of what is happening throughout this captivating tale.

The first issue that many Latino author’s address is the problems in many Latin American countries. In Esperanza Rising Esperanza’s family faces the backlash of the Mexican revolution. Esperanza’s family has land in Mexico which makes them a target for many unhappy citizens in Mexico. Esperanza’s mother has to explain to her that, "the wealthy still own most of the land while some of the poor have not even a garden plot. There are cattle grazing on the big ranches, yet some peasants are forced to eat cats" (Ryan, 25). Eventually Esperanza’s father is murdered by bandit’s and they are forced to leave the dangerous country. Mexico is not the only place with major issues. Young Adult literature often reaches into the historical hardships of other Latin countries, such as the dictators of the Dominican Republican in Julia Alvarez’s novel Before We Were Free. Alvarez talks about the distrust of the police, stating “Back home, [her father] had been tailed by the secret police for months and the family had only narrowly escaped capture their last day on the Island” (Alvarez 233). Young Adult literature reflects this often as a background story, forcing the protagonists into the environment they are in. As well, it frames the families’ mindset and the hardships many have faced before

The story illustrates the overlapping influences of women’s status and roles in Mexican culture, and the social institutions of family, religion, economics, education, and politics. In addition, issues of physical and mental/emotional health, social deviance and crime, and social and personal identity are

The racist connotation that Miss Jimenez associates with who she thinks would “fit in” society’s box is a definite reflection of the hardships Valdez witnessed in his community. For example, the Zoot Suit Riots that occurred in 1944 was rooted by a reaction by young Mexican-American males against a culture that did not want them to be a part of it. Stuart Cosgrove examines this issue when he states, "In the most obvious ways they had been stripped of their customs, beliefs and language.” (*Vargas 317) These youths were going through an identity crisis because they did not know which culture they could identify with. Miss Jimenez is a character that embodies that repression Valdez explains in “Los Vendidos.”

Ilan Stavans says that Juan Rulfo’s book, The Plain in Flames, is best represented by the phrase realismo crudo. Stavans defines this phrase as “a type of realism interested in the rawness of life”, meaning that he characterizes Rulfo’s writing as an unfiltered view into the lives of the average Mexican (Stavans, xi). By writing in this style, Rulfo is able to provide “an image—instead of just a description—of our landscape” as stated by Octavio Paz (xv). To create this image, Rulfo broke his story writing the process down into three separate steps. As paraphrased by Ilan Stavans, the first step “is to create a character”, the second step “is to place him in an environment where he might move around” and the third step “is to discover how the character expresses himself” (xiii). Rulfo was able to repeatedly crafted stories that were filled with high levels of realismo crudo by using that special three-step process. By creating his protagonist, crafting an environment for said protagonist, and allowing the character to express themselves within this environment, Rulfo crafted a three-tier image of post-revolutionary life in Mexico that has never been seen before.

Latin American literature is perhaps best known for its use of magical realism, a literary mode where the fantastical is seamlessly blended with the ordinary, creating a sort of enhanced reality. Though magical realism is practiced by authors from other cultures, the works of authors Salman Rushdie and Toni Morrison, for example, are notable examples of non-Latin works in which magical realism has been used to both great effect and great celebration, it is in the works of Latin American authors where the style has flourished and made its mark on the literary world. Yet even in Latin American works we can find many different kinds of magical realism, all used to achieve a different end. In the works of the Cuban poet and novelist

When Octavio Paz first visited the largest Mexican population center outside of Mexico’s international borders, Los Angles, he said the city had a "vague atmosphere" of Mexicanism in that manifested itself through "delight in decorations, carelessness and pomp, negligence, passion and reserve." But he felt that his "ragged but beautiful" ghost of Mexican identity rarely interacted with "the North American world based on precision and efficiency." Instead, this Mexicanism floated above the city, "never quite existing, never quite vanishing.1By the time Paz visited the exterior Mexico, a generation of Mexican revolution immigrants had their children in the United States and they had matured. These people had heard the corridos of the Revolutionary

Liev Schreiber’s no nonsense aura, paired with his strong and threatening gaze would be used to play the lawyer for prosecution who cross examined Helen. This overall look of toughness would be used to put fear into Helen, as the lawyer for prosecution attacks her with questions in episode eight, destroying her previous

Even after hundreds of years, the Mexican Revolution remains an important mark in Mexican politics. Adams believes Carlos Fuentes is trying to say in The Death of Artemio Cruz by saying this,

Carlos Fuentes author of The Death of Artemio Cruz has used his novel to show how Mexico has been transformed and molded into its present state through the use of his character Artemio Cruz. Fuentes uses Cruz to bring together a historical truth about the greedy capital seekers, robber barons, if you will, who after the revolution brought Mexico directly back to into the situation it was in before and during the Revolution. Fuentes wrote the novel in nineteen sixty-two, shortly after the Cuban Revolution. Fuentes is able to express his disappointment from the Mexican Revolution, the revolution by the people in his native land. The revolution seemed to change nothing for the average person in Mexico; the