Comparison of Two Personal Narratives

In the essay of Judith Ortiz "The Myth of the Latin Women: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria" was an essay I believe many students were able to relate, understand, and reflect with the arguments she pointed out. Judith Ortiz seemed passionate in her essay because it was a narrative of a situation she went through. While reading Judith 's essay it was easy to comprehend what she was trying to make her audience understand. Judith 's tone throughout the essay was form, reflective, and informative. The imagery she gives us in her essay when talking to about Latin women made easy for students to image

She first begins by reliving her first encounter of a general stereotyped by expressing how after a young man saw her, he immediately went into reenacting the Maria from West Side Story. Cofer states, “a young man, obviously fresh from a pub, spotted me and as if struck by inspiration went down on his knees in the aisle. With both hands over his heart he broke into an Irish tenor's rendition of "Maria" from West Side Story.” Firstly, this addresses the main fact that she is Latin making her an immediate credible source as she fits the “mold” of who is being stereotyped. Then secondly, it gives a peek into what is yet to come for the rest of the essay since it’s from real experience.

Cofer, Judith Ortiz. “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria.” The River

In Cofer’s essay, she explains her personal experience with being stereotyped just because she was Latina. To many people, she

Both of these essays reflect on facing prejudice with a particular audience in mind: Cofer’s intended demographic is white men, while Staples is addressing society as a whole, but particularly white women. Cofer wants men to know that Latina women are not the sexual deviants they are stereotyped as; they are not simply the “whore,

In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” Cofer shows the reader that Latin women are misrepresented in society and in the media, using the rhetorical appeals ethos, logos and pathos as well as allusions to popular culture and personal experience.

The articles “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” written by Juthish Oriz Cofer and “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh are two essays covering the topic of race and gender. With a focus on privilege and race, one may assume that these two articles say the same thing, while in reality that is not true. As McIntosh and Cofer come from two different backgrounds and social standing, the authors offer two very unique views on the subject matter. Due to Cofer being a Puerto Rican woman and McIntosh being white woman, the two are opposites when it comes to white privilege and how it has effected them. This allows for them to give different views on the subject within the papers. Each articles differ in the audience, the purposes, and the appeals used within. On the other hand, both works are similar with the end goal and intended audience. As a member of the audiences targeted by both of these authors, I was able to connect to both of their writings due to the many different ways the two authors connected to their audiences.

In this article, “The Myth of the Latin Woman” Cofer has talked about many incidents from her life where she was talked about, from a young girl the adult life. Ortiz Cofer is so ardent about this topic of stereotyping Latin women because she was a native women of the Puerto Rico area who really grew up in the United States. There is how she witnessed firsthand how hurtful stereotyping could be. In “The Myth of the Latin Woman”, She has repeated use of Spanish words in the essay to shows her audience how proud she is of the Latin heritage. she continuously uses other words, such as Puerto Rican, and Latina to stress the names she heard growing up. Because she has been brought up to love her Latin culture, she was often stereotyped here in the United States. As you can see, this is why she became so involved with trying to bring people so much awareness to the

The Myth of a Latin Woman is the story of a young woman, Judith Ortiz Cofer, living in America as a Puerto Rican immigrant. No matter how far she tries to get from her Puerto Rican side the Island never leaves her. She shares that being clearly Latina, in her experience, can gain you some polite of attention or it can lead to a rude distancing. This is due to the fact that there are so many differences between American culture and Latin culture, which can also lead to awkward social interactions. A very obvious difference in the cultures is clothing and styles of dress. Not knowing how to properly dress for social occasion in American culture left Ortiz Cofer extremely uncomfortable and self conscious. As she grew she learned more about the stereotypes that are placed on her for being Latina. Although she had a hard time when she was growing up, Ortiz Cofer still became successful and showed that anyone can do the same thing.

In the story, the myth of a Latin of woman she stated how growing up as a Puerto Rican girl was very difficult, her life was very different from a regular normal teenager her family had kept her under surveillance. Her family was watch her because she a girl and was expected to continue her family tradition and honor and expected her to act like a “proper senorita”. As a teenage she was force to be an adult. Cofer had to be different she had to be an adult and dress older than most of her other friends. The life she was living was very different than any other girls she had knew, she always labeled and stereotyped. Later, when cofer had grown up she experience a few different situations where she was being stereotype. “The first was when a man was singing an offense Spanish song to her

The essay by Judith Ortiz Cofer, “The Myth of the Women/ Just Met a Girl Named Maria” is a powerful piece. She talks of the culture of being Puerto Rican living in New Jersey while she was growing up. She uses multiple examples of how her culture seemed to follow her throughout her life. She also shows the downsides of being a latina and how she overcame these struggles. One method she uses in order to show her audience the struggle that her and other latina girls could go through in there lives, is appeal to ethos.

Finally Cofer’s story sees her wrestling against the white stereotype of a Latin woman because of her appearance. As a girl she was seen as indecent when she attended parties because was

As Gutierrez describes it, “There’s a certain amount of racism among Mexicans against blacks and blacks against Puerto Ricans. But I see more racism with the blacks than with the white or Latin” (1). Though ironic, it’s no surprise given the history of the Black community in this country. In Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow”, she analyzes through history the transition of the ill treatment of the Black community. She argues that the idea of race is merely a social construct mostly created by European imperialism that sought to demonstrate superiority and therefore used the classification of races as a tool to justify their own agendas.

Collectively, these literary images go to describe a young ethnic man, probably of Latin descent, who lives with his mother in a poverty stricken area. The careful recitation of instruction given to the younger man seems to demonstrate an intricate knowledge the narrators has accrued from both predecessors and experience. Singularly, this part of the story is very powerful in that it shows a young man having to hide who he is and where he comes from in an effort to seem appealing to women, and speaks volumes about the deception that both genders go through all in name of the chase.

And there is no doubt that their changes also influence on the media’s myths. In accordance with “Black Men and Public Space”, Staples tells that he makes himself less threatening: he chooses to whistle melodies from Vivaldi, and spends more time dressing up in a business suit instead of his casual clothes. Therefore, particularly, everyone is no longer suspicious of his characteristics and treats him normally. As a reader, we can easily notice how quickly people change their emotions from fear to acceptance to one particular person. The transition, in Staples’ story, is not from the public’s attempt to get to know the author, but from their narrow-mindedness. Once the public spots Staples’ changes, which are ethically proper, they adjust their opinions right away without any concern. Change is also implemented by Cofer. In “The Myth of Latina Women”, Cofer states that she is so lucky to learn American culture quickly, and speak in American accent to save herself from racial prejudice. In her process of saving herself, she receives so many positive interests by people who want to know about Latin culture, and esteems from people in the community. Like “Black Men and Public Space”, “The Myth of Latina Women” also indicates the sudden difference from the media. In Cofer’s story, the myth of Latina Woman is faded away by her change,