Richard Rodriguez And Manuel Munoz

“Our culture, our traditions, our languages are the foundations upon which we build our identity.” - Unknown. Bilingualism has many different interpretations and definitions and can cause problems in the community or unite it. The concept of bilingualism represents several different ideas, two writers, Martin Espada and Richard Rodriguez share in their essays their personal stories about being immersed into the English culture and learning the language. They share their views of what bilingualism means to them personally and make arguments about the importance of the concept. The two essayists bring awareness to the major role bilingualism plays in the communities today and highlight the effects of disagreements between cultural groups.

In Dinaw Mengestu's essay "Home at Last", the author describes his transition from Ethiopia to America and describes how the transition was easier for him, as child of 2 than it was for his parents who were far more familiar and entrenched with Ethiopia than he was.

For Mengestu, being able to fit in a community could only be achieved if he knows who he is and where he is from. His inability to understand his identity throughout the majority of the book is tied to his belief that identity is passed down from one's placed of origin, family background and views, environment growing up, or a combination of these. Thus, leaving Ethiopia at the age of two to live in the United States causes him an internal conflict over determining who he is. Is Mengestu from Ethiopia? Is he from America? Mengestu’s struggle to call a place home, to say he is “from” somewhere, is due to his perspective on identity, which causes him to isolate himself until he realizes that he, and only he, can define where home is.

Immigration is a heavy topic to address, but the authors of these articles have a way of putting a human face to these stories that help make the article more personal and understandable. In the article “In Trek North, First Lure Is Mexico’s Other Line,” the author talks about the story of an immigrant woman who lost her leg while on her way to America. The author begins to explain that the immigrant woman was trying to find work in America so she could support her four year old daughter back home. Archibold, author of “In Trek North, First Lure Is Mexico’s Other Line,” says, “[the woman] made it to Mexico and onto the train. But after it departed there were cries of “Migra!” — the immigration police — and a scramble that sent her tumbling under the train,” (Archibold 36.) The woman lost her leg, but all she could think about was staying alive for her four year old daughter. This story that archibold plants in the reader’s mind lets the reader understand the reason for why immigrants are so resilient into coming to America. The author for “The Heartache of an Immigrant Family” did the same thing as archibold. Sonia Nazario, author of “The Heartache of an Immigrant Family,” began to tell the story of Lourdes and her children. Sonia explains that, “Lourdes Pineda was the single mother of a 5-year-old

The author Sonia Nazario goes on this journey to get the feel of what immigrants do in the real world. She wrote this story that way us readers understand the struggles immigrants go through daily. United States citizens do not realize there is a growing number of immigrants daily. Enrique’s mother Lourdes left him at such a young age with a lot of responsibilities, that children should not have to worry about. Lourdes wanted nothing but the best for her children, therefore she traveled all the way to the United States, that way she could make a lot of money to support her children. As a mother she did not want her kids to have the life she did. Throughout Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, the author includes emotional and logical appeals, accurately supported by statistics and personal accounts that give perspectives on the same issue of immigration and Enrique living without his

When reading through the different perspectives in Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans, each perspective provides a different sense of emotion as each individual travels to the United States in search of the American dream. In Alma, Arturo, and Maribel’s case, the family travels in search of more adequate health care and better school systems to suit Maribel’s needs after her accident. By taking in their perspectives, it is nearly impossible not to root for their characters. Although immigration is such a pressing and more challenging topic to debate in the United States, the book raises the question of, “Wouldn’t you do the same for your family?” There are a numerous amount of influences in making this decision that tell what we should and should not believe when addressing this issue including family, friends, the media, politics, etc. With these influences, it is difficult to make an unbiased decision.

Throughout many depressing situations, Americans have accomplished many goals of their own from the ground to the sky. Delores Kesler was a single young mother struggling to get everything done due to her dead-end jobs. But that didn’t stopped her there, "she wanted to make a contribution to her community and started requiring her employees to devote time to community service." (Rather) Kesler could have given up life and on her child with her short jobs, but she believed in herself that she can be whatever she wanted. Oscar Acosta was a man who the opposite of Kesler in the sense of how he starting career. He had a good family, a college scholarship, and a talent for pitching of which gave himself so much meaning. Acosta became obsessed with

Being that the director of this film, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, is from my home city of Laredo, Texas, I was very excited when I saw the title Me and Earl and the Dying Girl at the top of the movie list in our syllabus. This film is superbly and artfully done,

Nguyen does an excellent job of show the reader that it’s not easy to be an immigrant. She demonstrates to the reader, through her own personal experience, that turning into an American is more that wear American clothes, and speaking English. She makes the reader realize that the process of Americanization can be harsh at time. Americanization can leave a person confused about their identity, in terms of culture and religion. She gives her first-hand experiences to prove that coming across new religion and culture can cause a lot of discomfort. Her message resonates with various examples throughout the American history. She also show that although assimilation is hard, but the promise of the American dream is alive and true to its mark. Anyone

Identifying with the way that Dinaw Mengestu explains his struggle to find where he is from to define who he is, I am simply not from America (Mengestu, 75). While some people, like my sister, have adopted American culture to a personal level after immigrating, I refuse to consider myself American. While I believe globalization is a homogenizing force that may act by branding other nations as American (on the belief that homogenization is the result of Americanization), I do not wish to homogenize my identity with the everything else considered American. my sister was quickly adopting the American culture at a rate I was trying to avoid. For my sister, it seemed like moving on and completely adapting was a normal part of the process. For me, moving on meant giving up also who I was, and I had already given up enough in moving. I did not want to also give up who I was and still am. Like those in Mengestu’s Kensington, I simply wanted to create an identity for myself with an awareness of the world where everyone, regardless of identity, can belong to any particular space with the choice of maintaining or giving up one’s roots (Mengestu, 78-79). I just wanted to bring my roots along and replanting them, rather than planting a new seed to start completely anew. With Mengestu’s story in mind, I have come to see why I was able to adapt by remaining who I was, for

I learned this week about minority-group responses how minority’s identity is affected by the social sigma and relationships formed during their integration. I had not thought about how a person may feel when leaving their home country and at times their family to pursue another home and life. Immigrants face many obstacles in the integration process, attempting to find a job, home, people that they can relate to. Not only the physical aspect of the transition of coming to America but also the stigma of how “American’s” view immigrants when they are in their workplace or hometown.

Throughout the five years I became a different Huseyn. Education abroad improved me second by second and day by day. My experiences in the United States of America taught me confidence, endurance, and tolerance. I learned how to understand what is right and what is wrong in social situations. I learned how to make big ideas happen. And finally, I learned how to be a strong, independent individual, who came to America to expand his opportunities in education and to build his future. The first time when I read “The Deportation of Wopper Barraza” by Maceo Montoya and “Make your home among the strangers” by Jennine Crucet, I felt something warm in my heart while I was reading each of these novels. These novels are so close to my life. For a second I thought authors were describing me and my life, but not Wopper and Lizet. “His misery was such that all he could think about was his own misery. How he missed home, how he missed his parents and Lara, how he would do anything to be back in Woodland, to have his

Immigration has been a big controversial topic this past years it’s so unbelievable how far people go with their goals as immigrants. This novel “The Unknown Americans” (Henriquez, Cristina) is about a couple of families that immigrate to America to have a better future for their children. They pass through obstacles in their daily living and still walk with a smile in their face. I will be writing four letters to four people that I feel I relate to in some way and caught my attention. My first character is Alma Rivera, which is the wife of Arturo, and the mother of Maribel, she is a great mother and wife who worries about her daughter who had an accident and now is disabled. The second person is Arturo Rivera, he is a great example of a hard-working

When analyzing a work of literature, it requires the person taking that task to do some active reading on the work of the author so as to understand the point the author is trying to drive home. This article will take into consideration the elements the author uses in the story “America is in heart” and analyze the structure of the essay, style used by the author, use of imagery, metaphor and other rhetorical devices; and the author’s unique approach to issues of immigration, identity, and other themes as previously discussed. The core idea of the author is to use literary devices to vividly describe to the reader the problems that immigrants faced in America. In this article, I will basically focus on the way the author has used language to

As this year has progressed immigration has become a very controversial topic within the American president, the government, and the people. Some people disagree with the idea that illegal immigrants being in this country is okay claiming that they compromise the country’s safety. On the other hand, looking through an immigrant's perspective, you can see how they arrive to the United States in hope to find the American dream. Sadly some of the country has begun to profile immigrants negatively and this has led to terrible divisions in our country. Due to this division, many pieces of literature come into mind, one in particular that was analyzed in class, A view from the Bridge by Arthur Miller, is a play about two illegal immigrant workers who are hiding from the government. They have come to America to pursue riches but if they were ever caught by the government, they would be sent back to their country. These two men are cared for by their family who live in the United States but because of fear that one of these men were infiltrating and manipulating one of the family members, the man of that house, Eddie, reported them to immigration services. Analyzing this story to Arthur Miller's time, he was writing an indirect commentary on McCarthyism and how people were reporting one another because of the fear of communist infiltration as well showing a real life scenario on what illegal italians were facing to pursue the American dream. Like this commentary on McCarthyism we