Mama Lola Essays

Born as Ray Mendoza on July 2, 1951, was born of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent. She was given the name Sylvia Rivera by a local community of drag queens and spent her career fighting for solidarity between transgender people, queer people of color, homeless people, and sex workers. Sylvia Rivera was one of the “street queens” living in New York, and is known as one of the most famous street youth who fought back during the police raid at Stonewall. Modern day, Rivera has come to personify the aspirations and flaws of the modern gay liberation movement.

In Julia Alvarez's Yo!, Yolanda Garcia's family and friends get their chance to tell the truth about Yo. They express their feelings and their stories about Yo, including how she's always told lies, how she stole the plot for a story from a student, and how her college professor kept trying to prevent her from ruining her life and her talents. Alvarez tells Yolanda's story through other characters, while Yo is denied the privilege of defending herself. It is ironic because initially, the novel is based on Yolanda and how angry her loved ones are after she publishes a book that exposes personal things about each of them. In this novel, these very people are working to set the story straight and portray the true Yolanda Garcia that they

It is impossible to interpret Gloria Naylor’s 1988 novel, Mama Day, in one way. There are multiple standpoints that a reader can take in explaining various events that occur throughout the book, as well as different ways that the characters in the book interpret these events. The author never fully clarifies many questions that the story generates so as to leave the readers with the opportunity to answer them based on their own personal experiences and beliefs. The multiplicity of perspectives in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day is embodied in the legend of Sapphira Wade and the dynamics between logic and the supernatural and between George and Cocoa.

"The Mother," by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a sorrowful, distressing poem about a mother who has experienced numerous abortions. While reading the poem, you can feel the pain, heartache, distress and grief she is feeling. She is both remorseful and regretful; nevertheless, she explains that she had no other alternative. It is a sentimental and heart wrenching poem where she talks about not being able to experience or do things with the children that she aborted -- things that people who have children often take for granted. Perhaps this poem is a reflection of what many women in society are feeling.

In the 1950’s through the 1960’s women were not respected in there everyday lives, in the job field or in general. They did not have the rights they deserved, so during this time the “women’s movement” began. Women fought for their rights and fought for the self-respect that they thought they deserved. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the character Mama, expresses her feelings of pushing or extracting a new side for a woman. Her role explains that woman can be independent and can live for themselves. Through her behavior in this play she demonstrates that women can support and guide a family. Mama is in charge of the family, which is unusual, since men are traditionally the “head of a family”. Through Mama’s wisdom

Vicki Lee Roach had her rights infringed from voting the Federal 2007 elections as she was serving a sentence above three years preventing her from voting, others than her other prisoners had their rights infringed serving a sentence more than three years.

Selena Quintanilla was a Mexican-American singer that dramatically impacted the world of Tejano music. “Selena transformed Tejano music from a local genre performed on a circuit of small venues into an international form that expressed the aspirations of many in the latino community,” affirms The Nineties in America. She was born on April 16, 1971 in Lake Jackson, Texas and died on March 31, 1995 in Corpus Christi, Texas. The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture states that, “she [Selena] was widely popular with Latino audiences, especially young women, who looked to her as a role model.” Although, Selena had a short life that did not prevent her from becoming a legend.

Dr evelina lopez antonetty was a very important leader in Puerto Rico. She helped get women rights in Puerto Rico , like equal rights , rights to vote, women go to school and equal pay.

Linda Bove is a deaf actress best known for her role as Linda the Librarian on the T.V. show Sesame Street. She was born to two deaf parents on November 30, 1945. While growing up she attended deaf schools in both New York and New Jersey. After high school, she attended Gallaudet where she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Library Science in 1968. During the summer of her senior year at college she discovered the National Theater for the Deaf (NTD), which forever changed her life. A few years after joining the NTD, in 1970, she made her Broadway debut in the play titled “Songs from Milkwood and Sganarelle”. That same year she married another member of the NTD, Ed Waterstreet. A year later, in 1971, she auditioned for a role on the popular children’s show Sesame Street and won the role. The show

How does Iola’s perspective of the role of slavery and race change throughout the novel?

Maria Moreno: What a creep, to leave his family for his mistress I’ve heard those stories too many times.

Márquez uses the character of Angela Vicario to show the power women can possess over the men in their lives. Angela Vicario is arguably the most powerful character in the novel, as she is the one who tells her brothers that it was Santiago who took her virginity, which consequently sets the entire plot of the story in motion. After Angela is returned by Bayardo San Román to her family due to the fact that she is not a virgin, when her brothers ask who it was who took her virginity, Angela “nailed [Santiago’s name] to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written” (Márquez 47). The way in which Angela searches for Santiago’s name shows that it may not have been Santiago who had taken

In a world in which abortion is considered either a woman's right or a sin against God, the poem "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks gives a voice to a mother lamenting her aborted children through three stanzas in which a warning is given to mothers, an admission of guilt is made, and an apology to the dead is given. The poet-speaker, the mother, as part of her memory addresses the children that she "got that [she] did not get" (2). The shift in voice from stanza to stanza allows Brooks to capture the grief associated with an abortion by not condemning her actions, nor excusing them; she merely grieves for what might have been. The narrator's longing and regret over the children she will never have is highlighted by the change in tone

of the world died.' The people will then walk up to the alter to kiss

At the time of ‘miracolo economico’, translated as economic miracle, in the 1958 to 1963 period, many females were emerging from the restrictive fascist regime into the accompanying aftermath of the war. Upon realization that they needed to work in order to keep their and their dependants’ livelihoods, many found themselves in the circle of sex work. It is with this in mind that Pier Paolo Pasolini creates the character of Mamma Roma, a struggling working-class woman. One can argue that Pasolini’s 1962 film Mamma Roma uses various cinematic techniques such as travelling shots and the chiaroscuro effect in order to reflect on the transitioning state of not only Italy, but more specifically, the changing dynamic of motherhood. Pasolini purposefully juxtaposes the character of Mamma Roma with Anna Magnani’s previous role in Roberto Rossellinis Roma Citta Operta, as Pina, the honorable, lower middle class, mother turned martyr, who was the epitome of justice and courage.