My Life Of Juana

Esperanza is the protagonist of the story. She is very wealthy and gets everything she wants. She struggles through her father’s death and moving to California. Throughout the story she becomes very mature, determined, and a hard worker. She really shocked me because she was a very spoiled princess who became a very strong migrant worker. Ramona Ortega also known as Mama is Esperanza’s mother. They are always together and she helped Esperanza stay strong. Throughout the story she is very strong but becomes very ill and depressed. Miguel was Esperanza’s best friends when they were little kids. He is the child of two servants that work for the family. He wants to become a mechanic and is very determined to reach that goal. They still look after eachother, even though they aren’t very close due to their social status. In the end he is able to bring back Abuelita back from Mexico. Hortensia was a servant that took care of their family. She always looked after Esperanza and was almost like a second mother. She was a Zapotec Indian. She was Alfonso’s wife and the mother of Miguel. Alfonso was a field worker and a very close friend to Papa. He loved the land and took care of the rose garden. He is the main person who helped everyone get to California. Isabel is the daughter of Juan and Josefina. She is only 9 years old but can clean, do laundry, and change diapers. She was the one who taught Esperanza how to do housework. She becomes very close friends with Esperanza. Isabel is the only one who goes to school to learn to read, write, and speak

Living in Mexico throughout her teen years was very rough. Unlike other teenagers where their parents constantly provide for their children, Marisela’s life was a lot different than the usual parent- child relationship. She lived with her Abuela ( Grandma) Lupe, along with her 3 brothers and sister. She constantly had to take care of her brothers and sister at such a young age, that she became the mother-like figure of the

The neighborhood is not exactly a pretty place as Esperanza describes it. She says, “here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful” (39). In the one year of Esperanza’s life that this book covers, she is raped, abused, and sees the death of the only person who would listen to her poetry- “Her name was Aunt Lupe and she was beautiful like [her] mother” (70). Her discontent with the neighborhood surrounding the house on Mango Street and the rough times that she experienced caused her to want to move away from

Alma feels afraid, trapped, and insecure about this unknown country, America, when she comes here for the first time. It all makes Alma dreadfully homesick for her friends, neighbors, and family in Mexico because of those bad conditions and the unfamiliar place. She does not know how to speak English; therefore, she has not known any neighbor to talk with. Also, the things do not occur like expectation. In fact, the life in the U.S. is worse than in Mexico. However, even if she knows that, she still makes up her minds to move here. Alma starts missing her former home in Mexico, for her and her husband lived there since they were born. When she stays home by herself, the feeling of missing is stronger than any other

In "My Name, "She looked out the window her whole life, they way so many women sit, with their sadness on an elbow". Abuse to Rafaela, again subtle because she does not go out, in fear of husband. Poverty on Loomis, Keeler and Paulina; poverty is a way of life. The impact is for all generations, the parents who cannot get out, the children that see it and the little ones who cannot know any better. The opportunities are limited in the barrio. Esperanza was embarrassed when she pointed to her house "there". "There?", as if there was no place for a girl to live. But survival is instinctive and there is a certain amount of barrio pride "Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we are dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake." The victim of being called a "rice sandwich". Hurt by the sister superior as she points to a row of ugly houses reminding Esperanza of the sin of being poor.

Ever since that faithful day they moved onto Mango Street, Esperanza has always wanted more. At a young age, she recalls moving quite a bit, and never finding a place that screams home. Her new house on Mango Street is an improvement, yet it doesn’t satisfy her. It is small and red, with tiny windows, crumbling bricks, and everyone in her family has to share a bedroom. Esperanza remembers when a nun drove by her old home on Loomis and said “You live there”, in a quite disgusted manner. She recalls feeling sheepish, as she looked up at her raggedy house and longed for it to just vanish. At this point, Esperanza wrote

In her essay “The Burrito, a Brief History”, Angela Morales appreciates and rejoices over the memories she had when enjoying a delicious burrito. In a humorous, colorful, and vivid manner, Morales is able to capture the reader's attention by describing instances where she has eaten a burrito with her family, a well know dish among her culture. Whether hearing her mom's past experiences at work or eating in the back of the van, Morales cherishes these memories valuable to her. Although Morales’ situation may not seem ideal, to Morales she is thankful and appreciative of the humble meal of the burrito she has grown to love over the years. From Morales perspective we see that a simple well made burrito not only represents part of her culture but it symbolizes the unity that has kept her family

When Maria was 14 her family decided for them to have a better life then they should come to America. He wanted his children and their children to have more opportunities than he did. So their brothers and sisters ended up getting their legal papers in Mexico, and then drove across the boarder for a long trip to Stockton, California. Her father stayed in Guadalajara to manage the family business with her oldest sister Sophia, named after her mother. That summer Maria and her brothers and sisters started working in the fields in Stockton. Maria’s job was packing fruit like apricots, peaches, strawberries and all other types of fruits and vegetables. She also did a lot of the harvesting at Beacon’s Island.

As a young girl Esperanza is asked one day where she lived by a nun from her school who happened to be walking by. Now before this moment Esperanza never really notice her living situation, all she knew is that her parents loved her and wanted her to go to school. When the nun rudely said “You live there” (Cinceros 5) and pointed at the shoddy apartment building, it is then Esperanza started to build a dream inside of her head because of the look on the nun’s face, unsatisfactory.

Despite my limited Spanish and her limited English, our conversation continued in Spanish for more than an hour. Jessica, her name I later found out, had lived in Peru her whole life and was on her way to Cusco. With the occasional pause and an intermittent language lesson or two, we covered everything from her career, my interests, her son sitting beside us, and our travel aspirations. It wasn’t until the plane began its descent that we noticed that the once barren landscape was now scattered with houses and woven by roads.

In Mexico all Juana finds are harsh living conditions and oppression that later give her strength to start her journey to the United States. Over time Juana has a more pleasant experience in the United States due to the kindness of strangers such as Don Ernesto but finds no peace until she recovers her father’s ashes and releases them where they belong. In the state of Guerrero, Mexico.

A life in the city of Seguin, Texas was not as easy as Cleofilas, the protagonist of the story thought it would be. The author, Cisneros describes the life women went through as a Latino wife through Cleofilas. Luckily, Cisneros is a Mexican-American herself and had provided the opportunity to see what life is like from two window of the different cultures. Also, it allowed her to write the story from a woman’s point of view, painting a vision of the types of problems many women went through as a Latino housewife. This allows readers to analyze the characters and events using a feminist critical view. In the short story “Women Hollering Creek” Sandra Cineros portrays the theme of expectation versus reality not only through cleofilas’s thoughts but also through her marriage and television in order to display how the hardship of women in a patriarchal society can destroy a woman’s life.

“The best thing u can be in Guerrero, Mexico is an ugly girl, “(1) Ladydi says. When her mother sprayed her neck with her whistled-spit that mails like beer and charcoal her face to make her look nasty. Mothers bruise, maim or disguise their daughters to prevent them from being kidnaped and sold as human chattel. Rita did all of this because she doesn’t went her daughter to be takin away from her. As Ladydi’s friend Paula, kidnapped, returns with tails of girls burning themselves with cigarettes to mark

Juana of Castile, through the eyes of a Spaniard In the 2001 movie “Mad Love” (“Juana la Loca” in Spanish), the viewer can observe various scenes that expose the point of view of a Spanish director and writer Vicente Aranda, who shows a lot of the views that have been mentioned in class in regards to the citizens of the territory that is now considered Spain, back when the story takes place, as well as in current times, since many of these still prevail. There is an obvious bias against women, as well as Moors, as the film shows Juana as a beloved and misunderstood character at first, Felipe of Hapsburg as a ruler who allows himself to be influenced by different characters, and a Moorish prostitute who bewitches him, ultimately causing a political move in an attempt for Juana to fall from power, when she is accused of being crazy due to her jealousy. These “Spanish” views are obvious in several parts of the movie, as it will be pointed out.

Given Juana’s background history, it is most likely that she faced some form of discrimination along with violence. According to Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy, “people are partly the products of their environment” (Bandura, 2000, pg. 75). Taking this theory into consideration, it can be seen that Julia’s current behavior and situation were also a product of her environment in which she was raised along with her current living condition. Her early experiences were also influencing her present life. The cycle of not having much social contact during childhood continued even when she moved to the U.S. When her husband was deployed, she stated that she had not social support which further caused more stress. Since she was not allowed to go out of her house during childhood and had minimum social contact, which maybe later continued affecting her social life when she moved to the US.