Sections of an Orange dives into the personal stories of men and women living in Trinidad and Tobago and the Trinidadian diaspora in New York. Anton Nimblett allows the reader to experience the struggles with the characters, and there are feelings of isolation, longing, deception, and most commonly—love. Caribbean conceptions of gender and sexuality are usually geared towards the traditional types. In other words, boys are to playing football, and not helping their aunts sew and cook. Men are supposed to work hard and provide a home and raise a family with a “‘proper girl from university” (56). Women are depicted as having strong roles, taking care of the men, being the backbone of the family. Living in the Trinidadian diaspora versus in Trinidad and Tobago seems to give the characters a new space in which they could express themselves sexually.
Miss Emelda in “Into My Parlour” tries to get gossip worthy information from her neighbor Miss Betty. It seems that people have been talking about Miss Betty’s nephew, Terrance, Miss Emelda says, “‘Yuh nephew was never one to be put playing with the fellas. I even uses to see him helping you sew and thing so too”’ (33). Miss Betty feels that she should have known better than to fall into the trap of Miss Emelda getting comfortable and trying to find out her business. Miss Emelda digs some more but Miss Betty does not budge thinking to herself she will not let Miss Emelda “get the best” of her (35). The thing is Miss
In Spain and the Spanish colonies in South America in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, gender roles were distinct and the opportunity gap was enormous. Catalina de Erauso compares the two roles through her memoir, “Lieutenant Nun,” where she recounts her life as a transvestite in both the new and old world. Through having experienced the structured life of a woman as well as the freedom involved in being a man, de Erauso formed an identity for herself that crossed the boundaries of both genders. Catalina de Erauso’s life demonstrates the gap in freedom and opportunity for women, as compared to men, in the areas of culture, politics and economy, and religion.
A phenomenon that remained constant in the Dominican Republic and in the United States was that of masculinity. In both cultures, the idea of “machismo” is extremely prevalent and inevitably determines the manner in which a man can act in society. Although I am privileged as a man in our larger society, there are many disadvantages that come with being a man of color in our society. In Dominican culture, there is a heightened sense of masculinity, and the standards of what a man is supposed to be are so difficult to obtain. To be masculine in Dominican culture is to assume the role of “machismo” by forgetting about feelings and emotions. Everything from how men act, to what men dress like is determined by this idea. Following this idea, I have to almost treat women as inferior and make them follow the ideals of the submissive housewife. Even more so, I am supposed to spend an immense amount of time chasing after women and trying to win them over through derogatory means. I did not like the idea of “machismo” and it never peaked my interest as a child, but my father’s involvement in my life deeply affected the manner in which I perceived masculinity. When my father was present in my life, he made sure to constantly remind me of what a man was supposed to be. He always told me that I was not allowed to cry because men do not cry, and said that I always had to be strong because someday I would have to provide for my wife and I could not be weak in order to do that. With this
Angela McEwan-Alvarado was born in Los Angeles and has lived in many locations in the United States, as well as Mexico and Central America. She obtained her master’s degree at UC Irvine and since then has worked as an editor of educative materials and a translator. The story “Oranges” was the result of an exercise for a writer’s workshop in which the author managed to mix images and experiences accumulated throughout her life.
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 theme of a patriarchal society where beauty is a weakness and having too much of it only means darkness is very prominent in Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street. Esperanza, the protagonist of the numerous vignettes, highlights how this affects the young women on Mango Street.
In the book The House on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros presents a series of vignettes that involve a young girl, named Esperanza, growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza Cordero is searching for a release from the low expectations and restrictions that Latino society often imposes on its young women. Cisneros draws on her own background to supply the reader with accurate views of Latino society today. In particular, Cisneros provides the chapters “Boys and Girls” and “Beautiful and Cruel” to portray Esperanza’s stages of growth from a questioning and curious girl to an independent woman. Altogether, “Boys and Girls” is not like “Beautiful and Cruel” because Cisneros reveals two different maturity levels in Esperanza;
In “Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Transvestite in the New World” by Catalina de Erauso, a female-born transvestite conquers the Spanish World on her journey to disguise herself as a man and inflicts violence both on and off the battlefield. Catalina discovers her hidden role in society as she compares herself to her brothers advantage in life, as they are granted money and freedom in living their own lives. Erauso decides to take action of this act of inequality by forming a rebellion, as she pledges to threaten the social order.The gender roles allotted to both men and women in the Spanish world represent the significance of societal expectations in order to identify the importance of gender in determining one’s position in the social order in the Spanish World.
Edited by several scholars such as Gabriella F. Arredondo, Aída Hurtado, Norma Klahn, Olga Nájera-Ramírez, and Patricia Zanella, this book in particular highlights the development of Chicana identities in the twentieth century by showing “how Chicana feminist writings move discourse beyond binaries and toward intersectionality and hybridity” (Arredondo e.al. 2). What is interesting is how the feminist scholars in this book used different epistemologies and methods in capturing the experiences of the Chicanas which include oral histories, poetry, theatrical performance, painting, dance, music and social science survey. Some of the contributors also combine “analytical tools and cross disciplinary boundaries” (5). The approaches used are very unique as they enables to unravel the Chicana experiences thoroughly and disrupt “the notion of Chicana identity as monolithic and homogeneous” (6). Also, the format of the book which presents articles and then the responses by another activist or scholars offers a very distinct way of presenting critical and provocative analysis. Such format allows the editors to “reaffirm the tensions and creativity of individual and group consciousness that underlie Chicana feminism and scholarship” (Salas 122). From this edited volume, I choose three articles along with their responses. Those articles are Cartohistografía: Continente de una voz/Cartohistography: One Voice’s Continent by Elba Rosario Sánchez (response: Translating Herstory: A Reading
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the reader gets a sense of what the expectations are of Dominican men and women. Junot Díaz uses Oscar in contrast to the other male characters to present the expectations of the Dominican male. On the other hand, Díaz presents the women in the text, especially Belicia, La Inca, Lola, and Jenni, as strong characters in their own rights, but the male characters, with the exception of Oscar, have a desire to display their masculinity to maintain power over these women. It would be unfair to say that the women bring the abuse unto themselves, but rather it is their culture that makes the abuse acceptable and almost to a certain extent—expected.
True masculine force goes back, in family stories from the Dominican Republic, with Trujillo's dictatorship shaping manhood perception in the Dominican culture. Oscar is incapable of rising to male-standard imposed by
Currently Sandra Cisneros resides in San Antonio in a purple house and she describes herself as “nobody’s mother” and “nobody’s wife.” Both Frida Kahlo’s and Cynthia Y. Hernandez’s works convey the idea of having one’s culture limit one’s freedom and individuality. Cisneros and Esperanza are both victims of this idea and realize that the only way to live one’s life freely is to defy the roles and limitations created by one’s culture.
For centuries, a great deal of ethnic groups have been disempowered and persecuted by others. However, one should realize that none are more intense than the oppression of women. In the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, women living in the Mango Street neighborhood suffer from their restricted freedom. Three such women, Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally, provide great examples. All try to escape from their dreadful environment. Most of them fail, but at first, Sally seems to succeed in escaping from her father. However, she ends up meeting a husband as equally bad as her father. Ultimately, the men who live with Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally act as insuperable obstacles that limit the freedom in their women’s lives.
Many of Mario Vargas Llosa’s younger literary publications were laced with Marxist critiques of a transitioning Latin American society in the 20th century, and though on the surface, “Los Cachorros” may seem little more than a fictional coming of age narrative, the allegorical short story is no exception. Told through an encyclopaedic tour of Lima’s urban spaces, a pack of boys’ transition into young men and their interactions with the city reflect both the rigidity and fragmentation of the Peruvian community as a whole. With particular reference to chapter five, this essay will explore the cities implicit influence on the characters’ fulfilment of heteronomous social identities, and Vargas Llosa’a use of specific literary devices to
When one first watches the movie, one may quickly judge that the characters are in direct contrast to the colors they represent. In the movie, Tangie (orange) which means vitality with endurance plays the part of a promiscuous girl whose hatred for her mother drives her to do what she does. On further look at her character, I realize she is a true reflection of the color orange. She endures sexual abuse from her grandfather and faces abortion at a tender age but is still strong enough to overcome it and bring out her true beauty. The text also employ poems and songs to show the intensity of pain and emphasize the strength of each character and women in general.
When it comes to the male drinking of alcohol in Latin America. The Latin American male associates drinking alcohol with being macho. Meaning drinking alcohol shows just how masculine a man is by how much alcohol they consume. The only males that drink on a daily basis are considered to be alcoholics. This is not what the male is trying to accomplish. The male is trying to show just how macho they are by the amount of alcohol they can consume. Drinking on the weekends and putting limits on the amount of alcohol that they are consuming during the week is the norm for the Latin males. According to Sanabria “Subject to greater scrutiny the celebrated image of the Mexican proletarian male with a bottle of tequila in his hand and a silly, satisfied grin on his lips” (Sanabria p.165).