These two stories are very different from one another. The story Mama Day has a lot of supernatural and non-relatable elements to the story, while the story How the Garcia girls lost their accent is more relatable and realistic. Each story has a cultural background. For instance, in Mama Day Willow Springs was once a land owned by a slave master who was murdered by a slave and in How the Garcia girls lost their accent their roots are from the Dominican Republic and they are now trying to adapt to the American culture. In the next few paragraphs I will discuss literary themes that are found in each story, followed by the background as to why I chose to talk about that theme.
In the novel Mama Day, racism and romantic love are two themes
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The island is located in coast Between South Carolina and Georgia. A slave owner by the name of Bascombe Wade owned the land that is now called Willow Springs. One of his slaves was Ophelia’s Great grandmother Sapphira wade. Willow Springs became a land of free African Americans when Sapphira killed her master. The slaves that were once forced to work for white men are now free on that land because the deed now belongs to Sapphira. Racism is something that will unfortunately always be around inside certain individual’s hearts because it is something that they were taught. Mama day’s grandmother had to endure being a slave because of her color and as a result took the life of the man who made her one and allowed her family to become free. As a Hispanic American I cannot relate to the story Mama Day because I do not know what it is like to know or to be apart of a family that has endured such a traumatic event like slavery. The novel Mama Day is truly a creative piece of literature. From witchcraft to supernatural experiences and even a romantic love story, this story was one that is enjoyable to anyone with a sense of …show more content…
The Garcia’s immigrated from the Dominican Republic to The United States to get away from political issues in their country. Once in America each of the Garcia girls had a hard time adjusting to the English language. Carla Garcia is further subjected to the frustration of having a language barrier when she needs to explain an incident that occurred to her to the police. One day after school, while she was walking home, a man in a green car followed her while performing sexual acts on himself in the car. The man then pulled up next to Carla and lowered his window and asked her if she would like to join him in a sexual encounter. Carla was still very young and not too familiar with what was going on; therefore she struggled to explain what had happened to the police in either English or Spanish since this was something she had never had to explain before. Yolanda was the one who was better well spoken out of the four Garcia Girls. She was into the arts and enjoyed writing poetry. Once Yolanda divorced her husband John, she decided to go back to The Dominican Republic to connect with her roots to further improve her poetry. She soon realizes after arriving in The Dominican Republic that she has lost all knowledge of Spanish and no longer feels comfortable in her native land. Yolanda starts to feel like an outsider and comes to the realization that she no longer identifies
A similarity noticed was the main topic of each story. Each express their view and their experience living in America. Both being girls living in an American society. Both talking about their American identity while being a mix of different ethnicities.
Living in Mexico throughout her teen years was very rough. Unlike other teenagers where their parents constantly provide for their children, Marisela’s life was a lot different than the usual parent- child relationship. She lived with her Abuela ( Grandma) Lupe, along with her 3 brothers and sister. She constantly had to take care of her brothers and sister at such a young age, that she became the mother-like figure of the
One of the main sources of tension in How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, written by Julia Alvarez, are the sisters search for a personal identity among contrasting cultures. Many of the characters felt pressure from two sources, the patriarchal culture that promotes traditional gender roles and society of nineteen-sixties and seventies America. Dominican tradition heavily enforces the patriarchal family and leaves little room for female empowerment or individuality, whereas in the United States, the sixties and seventies were times of increasingly liberal views and a rise in feminist ideals. This conflict shaped the identities of the characters in Alvarez’s novel and often tore the characters apart for one another.
The stereotypes of rural Black women are depicted in the seemingly dilapidated state of mama’s old homestead. This is a stereotype of the poor and humble lives of the black subsistence farmers residing in the old South. Although Dee and her friend look down upon their lives, the reality is different. Mama completely owns her own reality and she is proud
The novel is described as a coming of age story starring a young, insecure black girl. Living in the south and in California during the 1930’s and 1940’s, Maya was exposed to the harsh and limiting effects of racism. As young kids, Maya and Bailey struggle with being abandoned by their biological parents. For some time, their grandmother is the only influential figure in their lives. Their grandma, who is eventually called “Momma” runs a general store in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya spends time at her Momma’s store, watching the cotton-pickers travel to and from the working fields.
While each story had their contrasting elements, the base theme of each was remarkably similar; Both of the authors manipulate the theme of motherhood to examine the ideas of slavery, home and forgiveness during two very different time periods.
New Country, New Me: Taking Back Control in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Castillo demonstrates injustice in patriarchy by using symbolism. In the novel, Caridad is cheated on by her boyfriend Memo. Caridad starts to heavily drink after work, and while doing so she decides that Memo isn’t the only man she wants to give her love to. Following the drinking, Caridad begins to have meaningless sex with the random men she meets at bars. One
While going through a hard time of her husband being gone and he grandmother passing away, Lilia wanted so bad to cross into America to have her family together. An old friend of Lilia’s from school offered to help get her and her child across to America. Seeing that she trusted the man she decided to allow him to help her. Lilia and her baby had to go with different coyotes. She went to the house of the man that was to be her coyote; he took Lilia to a woman coyote that would bring the child across. After leaving her baby with the woman, Lilia and her coyotes started their journey in a truck. She was to ride on the back that was covered with the man that was not driving; along the journey, the coyote raped her. They arrived at a river, which she had to swim across. Once across the water, she had to wait in a junk yard in the back of a car for someone to show up and call for her. She was taken to a house, where she would get her new identification, a new life. This is where she awaited for her child and her husband. While she was waiting she had to cut and dye her hair, she also watched a man being murdered. Day’s passes and her child never arrived, but Hector did. Hector was grateful to see his wife, but very upset that his child had not arrived. Hector, Lilia, and Miguel tried to figure out how to find the child, but had no luck. Hector asked his boss and his wife to help but they also had no
In the two essays, “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space” by Brent Staples and “I’m Not Racist But…” by Neil Bissoondath, there are both differences and similarities. The two authors differ in their opinion on the causes of racism and life experiences involving racism, but are similar in regards to the use of stereotypes in the world
Amy Tan's, “Mother Tongue” and Alice Walker's “Everyday Use” both share similar traits in their writings of these two short stories. “Mother Tongue” revolves around the experiences Tan and her mother had due to her mother's English speaking limitations, she also revolves her story around the relationship of a mother and daughter. Alice walker on the other hand writes a story narrated by “Mama” the mother of two daughters Maggie and Dee and explains the conflicting relationship she has with Dee, both writers similarly emphasize on the relationships these mother and daughter characters had and they unravel both short stories based on these relationships. Although both short stories
"The legacy of past racism directed at blacks in the United States is more like a bacillus that we have failed to destroy, a live germ that not only continues to make some of us ill but retains the capacity to generate new strains of a disease for which we have no certain cure." - Stanford Historian George Frederickson.
Julia Alvarez also uses language to show how the four Garcia girls adjust to living in a new, and to them alien, culture. The protagonist in this novel is the family Garcia de la Torre, a wealthy, aristocratic family from the Santo Domingo, who can trace their genealogy back to the Spanish
“Racism the belief to distinguish a race with beliefs that they are superior to another”. As racism remains a major setback in America, it is in no Comparison to how it was like back in the days. From the pain it caused and the poor innocent people being tarnished on just cause of the color on their skin, this was a horrific phase to those who lived upon it. We have accomplished enormously but then again we still have much to improve. With the most discreet subtle form, modern racism is slowly catching up to us.
The main issue of this article is the racism against the first lady, Michelle Obama. The lady who made the racist Facebook post, Jane Wood Allen was a white lady; the majority of the people who are racist towards black people in America are white people. This is a serious issue because if citizens of the country cannot respect the country’s President’s wife, how can citizens respect one another. Also, in my opinion, having a person who discriminates and is racist towards a certain race, sets a bad example to the children in the school. Allen’s post went viral because it was on the internet, where anything can reach multiple views over seconds, but no one may have known what kind of a person she was inside the classroom, especially towards the