Manuel Munoz's Leave Your Name At The Border

Black people still call America their home, even though they are consistently discriminated against. Consistently hated on because of how they look like. Black people have been viewed as trouble, suspicious, no good, and will never be anything respectable (Goldberg 2). When young black children cannot be protected from this everyday, so they adapted to this way of life and was to never believe otherwise. Racism and discrimination limit not only black people, but everyone of color. People of color believe they will never be like a white man because of all the advantages a white man has. However, people like Benjamin Banneker, Kenneth Clark, and Toni Morrison are showing their skin color does not relate to their success or intelligence (Goldberg 3). These people are showing how even with all the injustice in America, they were still able to be successful. It is not about what the color of one’s skin is, it is about the mindset and perspective of each

are ideals used to define the American Dream. The American Dream promises immigrants and citizens a chance to pursue a better life, which is portrayed throughout the novel Behold the Dreamers . Behold the Dreamers , by Imbolo Mbue, follows the lives of Jende and Neni Jonga, an immigrant couple from Cameroon, who live in Harlem in hopes of providing a better life for their family. Throughout the Jonga’s journey, Imbolo Mbue proves that the essentials of hard work, education, and strong families are not enough for achieving the American Dream. Jende and Neni came to America in hopes of a brighter future for their family, but come to face with reality and are forced to make an impossible choice.

Reading The Night We Became People Again was a pleasant and refreshing experience. By comparing Jose Luis Gonzalez's tale with the work of his contemporaries, we see his style of writing is different. His way of developing a plot is more lively and cheerful; he even includes humor in many of his dialogs and events. In The Night We Became People Again, Jose Luis Gonzalez is telling the story of the day his first son was born. He starts off with a normal day at work when a longtime and mentally challenged friend of him, Crazytop, rams in and announces Jose's wife is in labor. They both rush out and face a few setbacks along the way, like a power outage during their ride in the subway. Soon enough, he arrives and gets the opportunity to greet

On the eve of the narrator and his family 's departure for the United States after twelve years of residence in Paris, the narrator is being chided by his wife and visiting sister about his nightmares. He is worried about his return to the racist United States after such a long absence and what effect it will have on his multiracial family and his career.

In the story, ”Like Mexicans” by author Gary Soto explains how he was always told him to marry a girl from his same ethnicity, but unexpectedly fell in love and married a Japanese girl. Sotos grandmother advised him to marry a girl that fitted the stereotype of a Mexican girl. He decided to ask his mom about the issue. His mom agreed that if he were to find a righteous Mexican women to marry her. Soto decides to ask Scott as well, who happened to be a second generation okie. An okie was what his grandma would call any person that was from a different ethnicity than them. They talk about their future how one day they hope to reach the American Dream. They share the same vision of marrying someone. It was shocking to him, that he ended up marrying a Japanese woman because he never imagined marrying someone that wasn 't Mexican. When he was twenty years old, he fell in love with a girl that he knew his grandma would be concerned about. Soto told his mom about the woman and how she was the one for him and the more he talked about her the more his mom seemed to be worried. That’s when he realized that his mother wanted him to marry someone from his own social class. Everyone agreed that indeed he wasn 't good enough for his fiancee. One day Carolyn took Soto to her home to meet her parents. Soto was nervous, until he sees her house and how alike their houses looked. He acknowledges how alike their ethnicities were, mainly in the economic sense. As Soto is in the roadway he

Tanya Barrientos explained her struggle with her identity growing up in her writing “Se Habla Español”. Barrientos describes herself as being “Guatemalan by birth but pure gringa by circumstance” (83). These circumstances began when her family relocated to the United States when she was three years old. Once the family moved to the states, her parents only spoke Spanish between themselves. The children learned to how read, write and speak the English language to fit into society at that time in 1963. (83) Barrientos explained how society shifted and “the nation changed its views on ethnic identity” (85) after she graduated college and it came as a backlash to her because she had isolated herself from the stereotype she constructed in her head. She was insulted to be called Mexican and to her speaking the Spanish language translated into being poor. She had felt superior to Latino waitresses and their maid when she told them that she didn’t speak Spanish. After the shift in society Barrientos wondered where she fit it since the Spanish language was the glue that held the new Latino American community together. Barrientos then set out on a difficult awkward journey to learn the language that others would assume she would already know. She wanted to nurture the seed of pride to be called Mexican that her father planted when her father sent her on a summer trip to Mexico City. Once Barrientos had learned more Spanish and could handle the present, past and future tenses she still

James Loewen begins “The Land of Opportunity” by saying that teenagers have their ears and eyes tuned into TV and radio which show privileged Americans, because of this teenagers and adults are comparing their own social status against that of their peers and then the community against

There was a time when America was segregated; Caucasians and African Americans were forced to attend different restrooms, restaurants, and water fountains. However, the era of segregation has been terminated; now America embraces and appreciates the various cultures and ethnicities that create this melting pot several people call home. Likewise, it is this melting pot, or mosaic, of races that multitudes of individuals have identified themselves with. Thus, race and ethnicity does matter for it portrays vital and crucial roles in the contemporary American society. Furthermore, ethnicity and race brings communities together in unity, determines which traditions and ideals individuals may choose to value, and imposes an impediment for it categorizes humans unjustly.

The novel starts with Coates addressing his son, Samori.He begins recounting a time when he was invited on a talk show and the host asked him what it meant to lose his body, looking for an explanation as to why Coates “felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence.” This turned out to be a very heavy, intense, and loaded question. Coates went on to explain to his son that America was built on the oppression, abuse, and exploitation of black people, of their bodies, which only intensifies the hypocrisy of the democratic foundation that America prides itself on. The recent murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, and other black people and “the destroyers who were rarely held accountable” prove that the disregard and mutilation of black bodies is embedded in America’s DNA, and no one gives it a second thought. The American “dream” that is built on the purity and innocence of wanting happiness was only ever made plausible by the oppression of black people, who still struggle to achieve that dream because they were abused into a life of silence and fear. “The Dream rests on their backs, the bedding made from their bodies.” Coates went on to explain how this history of exploitation and the fear that’s been rooted into the lives of black people in America followed him throughout his schooling and on the streets of his neighborhood. The schools that he was sent to discouraged black children, rather than encouraging growth and facilitating a healthy learning environment. The streets were carefully orchestrated for self defense. You had to protect yourself, because you knew the law wouldn’t. At Howard University, “the Mecca”, the excitement of witnessing the diversity that flooded the

This poem shows that all immigrants move to the United States to look for the “American Dream”. They risk their lives to obtain a better life for themselves and their families. When the author says:

    Many immigrant and minority narratives concentrate their efforts on the positive side of the American dream. These particular stories narrate a person's struggle and rise through the ranks of the Am6rican hierarchy focusing on the opportunities that seem to abound in this country. While these stories are well and good. they do seem to soft peddle the flip side of this country's attitude toward the immigrant and minority. America is a land of milk and honey and opportunity, but unfortunately most new officiates or unwilling participants in the American culture face an American nightmare that leaves its effects on the individuals, families and cultures

The article “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant” was written by Jose Antonio Vargas. In it, Vargas tells of the time when his mother brought him to the Phillippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport when he was twelve. His mother told him that she wanted to give him a better life so he boarded onto a plane with a man he had never met before and was told that he was his uncle. He arrived in Mountain View, California and moved in with his grandparents Lolo and Lola. Vargas says that he grew to love his new home and when he entered sixth grade that’s when he found his passion for language. He tells of his struggle of making a distinction between “formal English and

Immigrants arrive here in America to establish a better quality of life. They come here to get a job, raise their families, and get an education. To express their need for stability is important. In “Border on Our Backs,” Rodriguez carries some sociological information of how Latinos feel judged. The author states, “Just who precisely needs to be pardoned? Those who are exploited and who’ve been here forever…or those who’ve been complicit in our dehumanization” (562)? He feels criminalization in the way the Latin immigrants are treated. Rodriguez talks about some racial profiling in

The American dream can be defined as a national ethos which encourages freedom for all individuals regardless of their race, religion, colour or socioeconomic status. Through the theory of American Exceptionalism and the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”, the American Dream presents itself as a system of equal opportunity and prosperity for all citizens. Author, Harper Lee, effectively draws attention to the hypocrisy of the American Dream in her enchanting novel “To kill a mockingbird”. Texts such as the front page of Malcolm X’s novel “By any means necessary” and Tupac’s song “White Man’s World” also reinforce

The American Dream exists in the hearts of all Americans and is a concept that drives many people from all over the world to want to come to America. It holds the promise of infinite possibilities and allows them to escape a society of poverty and racism. This Dream also exists in the hearts of many Americans already living in America. However, this dream primarily exists in the minds of minority populations, such as African Americans, whose past is full of discrimination based on their race. The American Dream not only offers success in the form of economic stability but also acceptance from society regardless of an individual’s race or religion. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, shows how the American Dream is not often available to