Moises Gutierrez : A And Safe For Anyone

Immigration affects families in many different ways. In the book “Enrique’s Journey” by Sonia Nazario, family is a core element. After Enrique’s mother leaves for the U.S., the whole concept of their family gets distorted. The walking out of Enrique’s father and the abandonment of his grandmother help to disband the family even more. Enrique also threatens to repeat the same mistakes his family made with his daughter when he considers leaving her behind in Honduras. Family is the central theme in Enrique’s Journey because of his relationship and resentment with his mother, the rejection of his father and grandmother, and Enrique’s decision to leave his daughter, Jasmin, behind.

Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated with his family to New Jersey, where a collection of his short stories are based from. Out of that collection is a short story “Fiesta, 1980”, which was featured in The Best American Short Stories, 1997. This story is told from the perspective of an adolescent boy, who lives in the Bronx of northern New Jersey with his family. He is having trouble understanding why things are the way they are in his family. Diaz shows Yunior’s character through his cultures, his interaction with his family, and his bitterness toward his father.

Enrique’s journey from Honduras to the U.S. unveils the innate loyalty of a loving child to their mother and presents the dangers that a migrant faces on the road with consistent angst; nevertheless, it supports the idea that compassion shown by some strangers can boost the retreating confidence within a person. In Sonia Nazario’s “Enrique’s Journey,” he seeks the beacon of light that all migrants hope to encounter; “El Norte.” Like many children before him, it is the answer to the problems of a hard life. While being hunted down “like animals” leading to “seven futile attempts,” he is

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.

The purpose of this story is to show that your childhood does not define your whole life. Diaz obviously had a rough childhood at times. Especially moving into the United States from the Dominican. His family did not have many funds, to give him all the things he needed. This did not stop him from succeeding on his own though. Diaz went on to graduate high school, something that most

Although mistreatment caused considerable suffering for Mexican-Americans, it also forced them to overcome internal differences in order to form a secure community, and contributed to the eventual development of a sense of mexicanidad. Gutiérrez explains how the abuse faced by Mexican-Americans caused the formation of such ties, stating, “it is common for such newly created minority populations to develop a new sense of identity as a natural defense mechanism or as part of a larger ‘oppositional strategy’ against the prejudice and discrimination shown them by the majority or dominant group.” The Mexican-Americans developed barrios and colonias throughout the Southwest to act as such defense mechanisms. These were communities of Mexican-Americans

Alejandrez begins his essay with a story from his childhood. He sets up the story by giving it a time and place he is the son of a migrant worker born in a cotton field in Merigold, Mississippi. He then describes his difficult childhood using vivid language, as the son of a migrant worker he had to move many times a year and assimilate into many different schools. His family had to make ends meet with the little money they had so most of the time that meant having no shoes or one pair of pants. The social climate was also very tense, he describes it as “ I always remembered my experience in Texas, where

Each year, thousands of Central American immigrants embark on a dangerous journey from Mexico to the United States. Many of these migrants include young children searching for their mothers who abandoned them. In Enrique’s Journey, former Los Angeles Times reporter, Sonia Nazario, recounts the compelling story of Enrique, a young Honduran boy desperate to reunite with his mother. Thanks to her thorough reporting, Nazario gives readers a vivid and detailed account of the hardships faced by these migrant children.

As children grow up in a dysfunctional family, they experience trauma and pain from their parent’s actions, words, and attitudes. With this trauma experienced, they grew up changed; different from other children. The parent’s behavior affects them and whether they like it or not, sometimes it can influence them, and they can react against it or can repeat it. In Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980”, is presented this theme of the dysfunctional family. The author presents a story of an adolescent Latin boy called Junior, who narrates the chronicles of his dysfunctional family, a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic driving to a party in the Bronx, New York City. “Papi had been with

One thing all human beings, have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and family expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

First of all, the setting of this novel contributes to the Rivera family’s overall perception of what it means to be an American. To start this off, the author chooses a small American city where groups of Latino immigrants with their own language and traditions, lived together in the same apartment building. All these immigrants experienced similar problems since they moved from their countries. For example, in the novel after every other chapter the author

To begin with, Rodriguez’s first step to finding his identity began when his parents decided to move to the states to start a new life. At first, he was completely lost because he couldn’t understand the language. However, as time went by his English began to improve with the help of his parents helping him practice English at home. As he becomes more educated, he felt that a distance grew between him and his parents. “Here is a child who cannot forget that his academic success distances him from a life he loved, even from his own memory of himself” (Rodriguez 51). Rodriguez was connected with his family through his private identity. However, his distance with his parents began to appear as he advanced in English. As he starts to become fluent in English, he would talk to his parents less and less. His Spanish skills also started to deteriorate. Spanish is the language that gave him a sense of closeness to his family and is what separated him from the public. However, once he started to develop his public identity, he started losing his private identity. Rodriguez’s parents provided him with his own private identity and help him and supported him in developing his public identity to success.

Enrique’s conditions living in poverty as a young child through older adolescence had many negative effects on his family and his own emotional state. His family’s economic situation is what primarily led to Enrique’s mother leaving home to make money in the U.S. and help her family. Having to grow up and be raised by other family members instead of his own biological parents, played a significant part in his development as his dysfunctional and oppressive environment caused detrimental issues with trust in others and lack of love from his parents. Evans, Gonnella, Marcynyszyn, Gentile

Stories,” mainly because I personally live in the Los Angeles area and my parents grew up in parts of South Central and East Los Angeles as children. I found this this book would be most relatable to myself, since I am a Latina and my parents who have experiences a tremendous amount of discrimination, poverty, and violence in the past. They have over came these obstacles and were determined to provide my siblings and I with a brighter future. While researching a little more into the subject matter, I found that my initial perceptions on this book were true. Luis Rodriguez wrote this book to give his neighborhood of East Los Angeles a voice, in order to bring awareness to the unfortunate experiences that many, like my parents, have had to go through. My parents have shared many of their personal experiences while growing up in such a tough neighborhood and I was extremely interested in listening to the stories of

To begin, Esmerelda Santiago and her family immigrated into the United States from Puerto Rico. Immigration means, the movement of persons into a non-native country. At this point in time the family only consisted of Esmerelda, her seven younger siblings, Mami, Tata, Tío Chico, and Don Julio. After moving around from apartment to apartment, they finally settled down in Brooklyn, New York. Esmerelda explains that they came to Brooklyn, “in search of medical care for my youngest brother, Raymond, whose toes were nearly severed by a bike chain” (Santiago 1998: 3). Mami hoped for better medical attention for her child than she would have received in Macún, Puerto Rico. Esmerelda also describes the apartment they currently lived in on McKibbin Street, in New York as, “more substantial that any of our houses in Puerto Rico” (Santiago 1998: 6). This shows her level of living back in Puerto Rico was a worse living