Maria's Influence On American Culture

To help me understand and analyze a different culture, I watched the film Selena. The film tells the life story of the famous singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. Not only does it just tell personal stories from her life, it also gives insight to the Mexican-American culture. Her whole life she lived in the United States, specifically in Texas, but was Hispanic and because of that both her and her family faced more struggles than white singers on the climb to her success. Even though the film is a story about a specific person, it brought understanding into the culture in which she lived. Keeping in mind that these ideas that I drew about the Mexican-American culture is very broad and do not apply to every single person in the culture, there

You can see how Maria’s El Salvador is empty of people, full only of romantic ideas. Jose Luis’s image of El Salvador, in contrast, totally invokes manufactured weapons; violence. Maria’s “self-projection elides Jose Luis’s difference” and illustrates “how easy it is for the North American characters, including the big-hearted María, to consume a sensationalized, romanticized, or demonized version of the Salvadoran or Chicana in their midst” (Lomas 2006, 361). Marta Caminero-Santangelo writes: “The main thrust of the narrative of Mother Tongue ... continually ... destabilize[s] the grounds for ... a fantasy of connectedness by emphasizing the ways in which [Maria’s] experience as a Mexican American and José Luis’s experiences as a Salvadoran have created fundamentally different subjects” (Caminero-Santangelo 2001, 198). Similarly, Dalia Kandiyoti points out how Maria’s interactions with José Luis present her false assumptions concerning the supposed “seamlessness of the Latino-Latin American connection” (Kandiyoti 2004, 422). So the continual misinterpretations of José Luis and who he really is and has been through on Maria’s part really show how very far away her experiences as a middle-class, U.S.-born Chicana are from those of her Salvadoran lover. This tension and resistance continues throughout their relationship.

The United States has been a host to a wide diaspora of people. Immigrants have had to transition from their familiar land to a new-fashioned foreign land that they must consider home. They bring with them the essence of their initial homeland such as customs, traditions and beliefs that inadvertently change the dynamics of culture within the United States. As a result the United States is an extremely culturally diverse nation. The continual changes or accretions that Americans encounter have always been a controversial topic depending on the experiences of individuals and communities that have immigrant populations. This essay will critically explore

Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.

Latin American immigrants are not just concentrated to one area of the country. Cubans mostly live in Florida, while Puerto Ricans live in the northeast, and Mexicans mostly live in the southwest (Chavez, et al, 2005: 508). Their main destinations in the United States could be based on the geographic locations of their home countries. They settle in the area of the United States that is the closest to their country of origin. The formation of ethnic enclaves is common among immigrants because it connects them to their home country. They are able to livie among people who speak the same language, or in this case the same dialect, prepare the same food, and have the same cultural values. This spatial distancing is further proof of separate ethnic identities. Immigrants tend to live within groups of people from their own countries, not just with people who identify as Latino. By living with people from their home countries, immigrants maintain connections with where they came from.

Immigrating to a new country is difficult. One of the largest groups of immigrants that migrate to the United States are the Hispanics. There are approximately 11.7 million immigrants in the United States as of January 2010, and the amount continues to increase at a rapid rate (Warren, 2013). On average there are approximately 300,000 Hispanic immigrants entering the United States each year (Warren, 2013). Hispanics come from all Latin America including Mexico, the islands of the Caribbean, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, Central and South America (Warren, 2013). The United States has represented liberty and freedom to these individuals, and they often make critical decisions and take chances in the hope of a better future. Individuals often, leave their home country in hopes of a new beginning. The aim of this paper is to provide an extensive research on the current literature on immigration and acculturation among the Hispanic population.

Immigrating to America is a process in which many people all across the world entrust as their one way ticket to a better life. Whether they do so legally or illegally, coming to the United States ensures better opportunities, economically, politically, and so on, to people who would have otherwise been worse off in their countries of origin. Even so, the common understanding of being “better off” can be considered a misconstrued concept when it comes to living in the states. Many families that choose to immigrate to the U.S. fail to realize the cultural hardships that newcomers tend to face once on American soil. Anything from racial discrimination or bias at work, in neighborhoods, at school, etc., can all be challenges that people encounter when making a move to the U.S. Such challenges are described by Richard Rodriquez in his autobiography Hunger of Memory. In this passage, he explains how cultural differences between Mexican and American ways of life have shaped him into the person that he is today. He also chooses to highlights the problems that he faces growing up in a predominately white neighborhood, while attending a predominantly white institution. Much of his writing consists of the cultural differences and pressures he feels to assimilate to Western culture and how this process, in turn, changes him into the person that some may find to be unethical, but nonetheless, someone he is proud of.

The United States has been the land of opportunity for immigrants. It is a place where immigrants from all over the world come to build a better dream and future for their families and leave from poverty, they come with nothing but determination. One thing that every immigrant brings with them is their culture. A person's culture is strongly tied to the country where they grew up. It is tied to their relationship with their family. Many people come to America from so many different places all over the world. For this reason, people call America a melting pot of cultures immigrants are striving for a better future even though when they migrate to the USA they don’t know the consequences they will face and struggle to be successful living in the United States.

Interested by the success of several immigrant friends, journalist Claudia Kolker observed various customs of the immigrants and their families, which they brought along with them to the United States. She put together her observations in her book “The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness, and Hope,” which gives a detailed account of the traditions and customs of the immigrants residing in the United States. Though the customs are unfamiliar to a majority of the Americans, Kolker believes that the customs help to understand why the immigrant families tend to be happier and healthier, even though they hail from poor and grievous homelands, unlike Native Americans. In the book “In The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness, and Hope,” Kolker talks about various customs, including the Vietnamese hui or Money Club, the Mexican tradition of parenting a new mother for 40 days post birth, the South Asian custom of “assisted” marriage, and the Korean after-school programs.

In the United States, the cliché of a nation of immigrants is often invoked. Indeed, very few Americans can trace their ancestry to what is now the United States, and the origins of its immigrants have changed many times in American history. Despite the identity of an immigrant nation, changes in the origins of immigrants have often been met with resistance. What began with white, western European settlers fleeing religious persecution morphed into a multicultural nation as immigrants from countries across the globe came to the U.S. in increasing numbers. Like the colonial immigrants before them, these new immigrants sailed to the Americas to gain freedom, flee poverty and

Seth Holmes contributes greatly to the conversation of American immigration in his ethnography “Fresh Fruit Broken Bodies”. His detailed account of the experiences he had, people he met, and things he observed gives us great insight into the hierarchies in migrant society, the struggles immigrants face in terms of their health and health care, and how these inequalities become naturalized in society. Reading from his ethnography would make a great addition to the Anthropology 104 curriculum because of the various topics talked about and his different methods of research.

What really stroked me about Marisela was her optimism, perseverance, and her amazing strength to cope and adjust. After the initial ‘cultural shock’, she was determined to overcome the obstacles and improve her situation. Once her English fluency improved, with the help of her sister-in-law, she opened a hair salon and became an independent and a successful business woman. When asked what helped her with the process of acculturation, she said it was God. Religion is very important to Venezuelans, who are mostly Catholics. Like for many immigrants, church has always been a ‘safe heaven’, a place where Marisela met people who experienced similar adjustment problems, found new friends, was offered advice, help, information, and even English classes and financial assistance when she needed it. Through church, she also met Bob, and before she knew it, they were dating and falling in love. After getting married, they moved to North Carolina, and got blessed with two

Maria is a 14 year old girl currently in seventh grade, since moving from elementary into middle school she has struggled to remember her daily schedule. She has not been diagnosed with a specific disability but is believed to have processing and retaining information difficulties. She is a wonderful girl with a lovely personality and does well when given instructions with a routine. She is the perfect candidate for the choiceworks app since she can use it to check her schedule and check off what she has already acomplished. This app will bring her security and a sense of acomplishment.

These researches will focus on the cultural influences of American artists. Since I can’t name all of them, I will use Madonna, the queen of pop as an example in these research .The research will explain on how artists “Madonna” impact society, not forgetting the importance of choosing this topic, the theoretical paradigm suitable for this topic, the method I would use to study this topic, the ethical concerns to be aware while doing this research, and a little history of how Madonna become such a powerful woman in the music industry. First, I am interested in these topics because I enjoy the music and history behind the music’s evolution in society.

In Gabriel Marquez’ book, Of Love and Other Demons, Marquez portrays the tragedy of a young, neglected girl whose life was heavily impacted by the colonization of her community in Colombia. Bitten by a rabid dog, Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles’ unnatural condition is entrusted unto the Catholic church, where she meets Father Cayetano Delaura, who aims to save her from an exorcism. Like the community’s efforts to treat her benign bite, Sierva Maria’s identity is ultimately demolished through the community’s impractical treatments that overlook her personal well-being in exchange for their collective satisfaction. By detailing Sierva Maria’s unique characteristics, products of the cultural exchange taking place within her community, Marquez initially raises doubt on the blind, collective belief that identity is obtained with no influence from an individual’s actions. Furthermore, his depiction of Sierva Maria’s treatment based on her cultural adaptation leads Marquez to evaluate the challenges that prevent a society from understanding the factors that influence identity, and ultimately, the consequences of such ignorance.