In both the Dominican Republic and America, the girl’s sexuality is oppressed by men who trick them into thinking they care. While on the Island, Sofia meets a guy who she loves more than anything. When the other sisters arrive, they realize that he is controlling her every action and thought. He tells her what to do and will not let her think for herself. Carla was exposed to a perverted man in a green car. This causes her to think that sexuality is a threat to society and a dangerous thing overall. She can’t figure out who she is because this man stripped her of her identity.
Josefina Lopez writer of the play and co-screenwriter of the movie “Real Women Have Curves” created two important characters, Ana and Carmen, to demonstrate real life issues in the Mexican-American culture. In the movie Carmen becomes the antagonist that constantly torments Ana. Several identities were pushed onto Ana, forcing her have to break through her family’s old-fashioned cultural beliefs as well as her community’s stereotypes. Ana remained resilient regardless of what her mother put her through which led to her own self-love and comfort.
Sofia was the fun, carefree child in her family and all of her sisters are shocked when they see Sofia being suppressed and controlled by her boyfriend. The sisters liked Manuel at first, but then they took a step back and saw that, “The Lovable Manuel is quite the tyrant. A Mini Papi and Mami rolled into one. Fifi can’t wear pants in public. Fifi can’t talk to another man. Fifi can’t leave the house without his permission. And what’s most disturbing is that Fifi, feisty, lively Fifi, is letting this man tell her what she can and cannot do” (Alvarez 118). They see how Sofia is being suppressed and are shocked at how Sofia let her boyfriend do this to her. Sofia meets Manuel in the Dominican Republic and at first everything was going great. But then everyone started to see what was really going on. This man, as acceptable in the Dominican Republic, was completely in control of what Sophia did and how she acted. This passage shows that men in the Dominican Republic need to be in control of their women and have them listen to everything they say. This shows even more when Sofia tries to stand up to him, saying, “‘You have no right to tell me what I can and can’t do!’” (Alvarez 118). Sofia standing up for herself infuriates Manuel because he believes Sofia should not stand up to him because he is the man of the house. Sofia then feels she must beg for
This information provided helps support the thesis statement because Yolanda wants to find someone with multiple cultural identities like her but her struggle to stay to true to her native culture is not being able to find someone with the things she wants in them but she manages to pull through. As Yolanda visits the Dominican Republic she wants to try to reconnect with her own culture again and she tries to stay true to her own culture without any relationships getting in her
She detested the Latino machismo and openly embraced her sexuality, something traditionally looked down upon in her Dominican culture, and she had no problem arguing with her father while he still clung to his culture. However, Sofia never seemed to mind the aesthetic roots of her culture, fully embracing the style when she was exiled to the Dominican Republic—or as their mother said, she was “beautifully acclimated to life on the Island” (p. 117)—and her sisters forced her independent spirit back, when she fell for her illegitimate cousin, a man overflowing with machismo. But once out, she became fiercely independent and even feminist. In fact, when her father doted on her son but not her daughter, she found that “his macho babytalk [sic] brought back Sofia’s old antagonism towards her father” (p. 27) because Sofia “was the one with ‘non-stop boyfriends’”
Lola experiences a period of change in her life where she felt the need to alter her physical appearance to create a new identity because she did not like being the perfect Dominican girl for Beli. She says, “I looked at the girl in the mirror for a long time. All I knew was that I didn’t want to see her ever again… So now you’re punk? Karen asked uncertainly. Yes, I said” (Díaz 59). Lola is not comfortable with her life in Paterson, New Jersey and her identity as a young Dominican female, which comes with the responsibility of upholding their societal standards to please her mother. A woman’s hair in the Dominican Republic is a symbol of her beauty, and removing her hair shows her refusal of the beauty standards set in place by the men in society who determine what makes a woman beautiful. Her mother’s visceral response to her decision to cut her hair proves how deep-rooted the beliefs that a woman’s beauty is dependent on her physical appearance is in Dominican culture. Díaz writes, “The next day my mother threw the wig at me. You’re going to wear this. You’re going to wear it every day. And if I see you without it on I’m going to kill you!” (Díaz 59). Beli, like most other Dominican women, is conditioned to believe that the level of attention they receive from a man is a reflection of their beauty. She fears that Lola will embarrass her by disowning the values and ideas she upholds about a woman’s
Castillo demonstrates injustice in patriarchy by using symbolism. In the novel, Caridad is cheated on by her boyfriend Memo. Caridad starts to heavily drink after work, and while doing so she decides that Memo isn’t the only man she wants to give her love to. Following the drinking, Caridad begins to have meaningless sex with the random men she meets at bars. One
of Latin American immigrants in Madrid, briefly approaching three different questions: do they believe that there are differences about sexual and reproductive health issues between what they lived in their countries and Spain?; are they having different behaviors in Spain than in their origin countries and, if so, which ones?; and finally, what do they perceived about sexual health services and access in Spain?
When Sofia was with Manuel her mother sent her to Dominican Republic as a punishment for finding a bag of marijuana behind a bureau. Smoking was just one of the ways Sofia tested what was expected of her. Sofia also was able to find her sexual independence in America. At one point in her life, she was never without a boyfriend. She was brave and was her own person throughout most of the novel , but as soon as she was with a man that expected certain things from her and in a place where society agreed with those demands everything changed. Geological setting did not only affect Sofia’s beliefs in a patriarchal culture. The girls noticed a difference in the way their cousin Mundin treated them. “When he’s in the States, he’s one of us, our buddy. But back on the Island, he struts and turns macho; needling us with unfair advantage being male here gives him.” (127)
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.
Camilla, Arturo, Sammy, Vera and Hellfrick are all non-entities in the bustle of L.A. culture, but all are profoundly human in their suffering, confusion, and vices. All are battling a poor sense of self-worth and struggling to survive in an indifferent world. Arturo Bandini takes us through this story in intimate first-person, exposing us to his mood swings, his astute observations and his growth as an author and a man.
The women find the Island to be unwelcoming. They notice people with genetic deformities. The store clerk, RED, leers at them and tells them that the Island might be cursed by Indians. They run off a STRANGER from the grandfather’s beach house. They sense that there’s
Even after 30 years for some the stigma attached to HIV and AIDS often can lead to those who suffer from the illness as being second class citizens. The idea that those who have HIV brought upon themselves through “bad behaviors” can result in some people not seeking help or when they do they wait until the disease has progressed. However, the center for disease control considers HIV to be a focal point in the Dominican Republic, and one of the major concerns is how health officials can lower the number of new cases the country sees each year. One must understand that the rise of deaths from AIDS-related complex can mean an increase in mortality across the board creating a domino effect within the health system. Therefore education and awareness could change the health narrative by using preemptive measures. Also, those who are tested regularly and seek help quickly are those who are most likely to live full long lives.
The book’s main appeal and power is the author's use of Estrella, who serves as the focal point of all the large issues. In one particular scene, we see Estrella playing with one a naked doll. Estrella asks the naked doll if she was okay and then shook the doll's head “No”. This conversation with the doll can be seen as the sense of denial that takes place in a child’s mind that is not allowed to openly express herself, her fears, her anxieties, and her hopes. She allows the doll to represent her honest feelings about the lifestyle of living she is placed in. She is a unique and interesting individual, who will not grow up to be knocked down by economic issues, difficult labor, and especially men.
The other main character of the story is Adelina a girl who leaves her home in California to go to Mexico. Adelina is driven out of the United States because her family won’t accept her relationship with her lover, so they both decide to go to Tijuana, a city in Mexico. Not much is said about Adelina’s experienced in the United States. What we do know is that she had a family that loved her, but she decided to leave it all behind to be together with her boyfriend Gerardo. In Mexico she finds nothing but shame and misery because Gerardo could not find a job and the only way for them to make money was for her to be a prostitute. Besides having to expose her body, Adelina, is physically and emotionally mistreated by her boyfriend until it finally leads to her death when she tells him that she is going back to the United States with Juana.
The film version of Diary of a Teenage Girl, rather than condemning patriarchal privilege and its attendant exploitations as the book does, is instead a very careful take on a young 's girl 's exploration of her sexuality. The film and the book share the same premise but ultimately differ on delivery due to their inherently different approaches to capturing Minnie’s life as her and the other characters are portrayed differently, so much so that is a cautious take on an otherwise un-barred novel. Rather than touching upon patriarchal privilege and its exploitations, the film smooths over many of the more intense aspects in order to create a happy ending for itself, which is fundamentally different than what the book intended.