Judith Ortiz Cofer's Abuela Invents The Zero

Have you ever feel so worthless, like you were nothing? Everyone must have feel hurt because of others’ words and actions, no matter how tough they are. Judith Ortiz Cofer expressed her hurt feelings through her story, “Abuela Invents the Zero”. “Abuela Invents the Zero” is a story about respect and treat others like you want to be treated. Ortiz Cofer presents this theme by explaining how Connie; the main character in the story; made her grandmother felt worthless, Connie’s embarrassment towards Abuela, and the impacts of mistreating someone.

Accepting only the best decisions in life is not always the right choice. Experiencing new things can increase people’s knowledge, and become someone of new and different value during their time in this world. They are able to obtain something that everyone will cherish when they face horrific situations, and overcome it. With all those successes, people are then given the chance to go down a new road. The change may be good, or may even be something terrible, but in the end, people will become their own person with a unique mindset of things. Taking opportunities can lead to positive or negative change.

It is very important to make good choice in life. You should always think before you do and go over all alternative options rather than making a poor choice. Bad choices can reflect heavily on your life while good choices won’t do any harm. Try and make the best choice in every scenario for yourself and for the good of everyone. One bad choice can cause your life to turn around dramatically in the span of a few minutes.

Since the beginning of time, the environment in which one is accustomed to provides them with the choices that lead down paths that make their legacy. This environment can be negative or positive, structured or chaotic, rich or poor, all which give a variety of choices. Regardless of the different trials and tribulations we face ultimately, it is the choices we make in response that make us the person we become.

Judith Ortiz Cofer a Latin American author of short stories, poetry, autobiography, young adult fiction, and essays, as a young child migrated to Mainland America from Puerto Rico with her family, moving into an apartment complex with other people of Latin descent. Although, she spent most of her years in the Continental U.S. her writings are reflective of the strong latin heritage that her mother undoubtedly instilled in her from a young age. This is clear in her short story “Nada” where the narrator makes references to the hispanic community that live at an apartment complex in New Jersey. Cofer’s style of writing and experiences in her life are brought out in this story as well as many more of her writings. She includes some Spanish words throughout the story and ideals of the hispanic culture.

This narrative speaks volumes about the author’s culture, which describes her religion, as well as the lifestyle of typical Hispanic families. In Latino or Chicano culture, we find that gender as well as religion plays a huge role in the lives of many individuals, causing them to shape a stereotypical kind of culture. Catholicism is one of the major forms of religion in Hispanic and Latin countries due to the influence from the Europeans. This made many of the Latin American Countries adopt this religious practice regardless of their belief. To this day, many practice Catholicism as a way to appeal to cultural norms. We see the importance of religion to the girl’s family, especially her father. Throughout the story we see the girl’s search for her own religious relationship through her abuela instead of the one forced upon her by her parents. The other influence that culture has is on gender roles within the family dynamic. Throughout the story we see the girl made fun of for her hands and for being different. This is because in latin culture girls are supposed to be dainty and gentle. They were not meant to be violent or rash, like the young teenage girl was. The gender roles constructed by culture were what her father tried to assign her into, and her mother enforcing them,

In The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met A Girl Named Maria, Judith Ortiz Cofer addresses the problem of racial discrimination. Cofer was grown up with two different cultures. As a Latin Woman, she tries hard to fit in American culture. Cofer discusses how she has been treated due to her identity during her childhood and become an adult. And when facing those embarrassing situations, Cofer treats them with proper manner. Though demonstrating some examples, it is noticed that the Latin Woman were stereotyped as those who can only do simple work.

In all of the four interviews that are with Judith Ortiz Cofer, I thought there were some important things or I feel that I can relate to what she stated. In the interview “Speaking in Puerto Rican” reported by Rafael Ocasio, Cofer was told that her grandmother was one of her influences in her life. Cofer agreed with Ocasio and she went into saying that she would sit by her grandmother while her grandmother told her stories. I can relate somewhat to it because I didn’t sit around my grandmother while she told me stories, but my grandmother influenced me to succeed in something that I love to do. In the interview “The Art of Not Forgetting” reported by Marilyn Kallet, Cofer was asked why is “not forgetting” so important to you as a writer? Cofer

Everyone has choices in life, and these choices are what define us. Sometimes they can affect not only the decision maker, but it can affect others too, whether it is just a few people or it is millions of people. This is why a choice

Growing up, my family often let us form our own opinions and perceptions. There is one specific event that occurred in my life that has led me to being more decisive without others opinions. That event was when I got my knee stuck in the teeth of an escalator. In short, my shoe got stuck in between two steps and when I went to run my knee cap dived into the teeth of the escalator. The pain was so intense that I couldn't move so my sister had to physically pull my knee out of the sharp blade. I ended up getting stitches on the Bauer Family's kitchen table. During the numbing process I was offered pizza or Jackie Bauer's Nintendo DS. At this moment I felt as though I had no decisions to make regarding my injury. Although my options with only one of them I took both the slice of pizza and Nintendo. Believe it or not this event is reason I don't have much influence of my decisions today. Choosing to eat pizza while in pain was not the best idea for I quickly regurgitated it, however, being able to choose between these two items helped develop the decision making I do today. In these moments of excruciating pain on the chilling kitchen table I was able to make a decision for myself, forgetting about my fleshy wound and instead focusing on the delicious pizza and Nintendo. As a result of this accident, I made the decision to attend Mercy High School. My decision on attending Mercy has nothing to do with the fact that I am a legacy. My mother and my sister both attended Mercy but I knew I needed decide if Mercy was the best place for me. After research and multiple shadowing days I decided that Mercy was indeed the right school for me. The school provides great resources for students to act on and I saw this as a great opportunity for my future. Making decisions without the oversight and perspective of other individuals has certainly proven that I am a

Individuals use stereotypes when they judge others based on their own thoughts and opinions. In today’s society, individuals show prejudice towards others based on what they have heard previously from their friends and families. With that being said, individuals tend to express negative comments against people who have different ethnicities. When people hear the word “stereotypes”, they often forget how there are both positive and negative expressions. In this essay, there will be examples of positive and negative stereotypes and how there is a resemblance of both cases.

Why do you think choices important? Do you even think choices are important? Because I think choices are important. Just stop and think, dont you wonder what it would be like without being able to make your own choices for yourselves. You would be miserable right?

Constancia realizes that her actions have caused harm to her grandmother. The title of this story is Abuela Invents Zero. The plot in this story is that a teenage girl treats her abuela with no respect and no kindness. She is embarrassed because her grandmother can’t find her way back to the pew when they went to church. The theme “it is important to treat the people in your family with respect, or you may lose respect for yourself”, helps the reader understand that life experiences shape people’s values by showing that making someone feel worthless is hurtful.

Often times it can be difficult if not impossible to make what you think at that moment will be the right choice. One of the biggest factors that will hold people back is that to too often than not we are not completely clear on what type of result or outcome we want from a situation. Think about it, if you don’t really know what kind of result you want it is going to be pretty hard to know what choice is going to be the right one. So what do you do? You get a clear understanding, before you make any choice. Think about its effects in the long term, and short term. Knowing exactly what you want is very powerful. We have all heard the golden rule; do onto others as you would have them do onto you. This is probably one of the most important ideas to keep in mind when making good choices. When we are young a lot of us develop this me, me, me, attitude. We want all the toys, and we don’t want to share. Now this mentality may get us a lot of toys, but it defiantly doesn’t help you make friends. In this day and age a large part of personal success is based on working with others to achieve our goals. If we can help others get what they want, it will be much easier and they will be much more willing to help us get what we want. So when making any choice it is always ideal to think about how can I

There are many different reasons why people make the decisions that they do. Some weight the pro’s and con’s, think about the consequences of their actions, or how much desire is convincing enough to justify an action. These same thought processes happen when dealing with bigger topics including what should be done about our environment and if humans should work towards helping preserve it.