Silent Dancing Ortiz Cofer Summary

Many Minorities have been faced with constant stereotypes throughout their lives. Not only has this always been an issue for an extreme amount of time, but it has also negatively affected many people and how they live their lives. Judith Ortiz Cofer beautifully encompasses how Latin Women experience these stereotypes in an informative way by using specific rhetorical devices. However, her main purpose is to expel the negative experiences that she has with stereotyping, so all can understand the impact of it. Some of the rhetorical devices Cofer uses in her essay are ethos, pathos, and anecdotal evidence.

Barrientos starts with sharing her embarrassment to sign up for Spanish classes—the language used by her parents to communicate. Society’s expectation on her fluency of Spanish based on her Latina appearance causes self-questioning: where do I fit in? However, Barrientos initially refused to face her ethnicity as a Latina, beginning at a young age. The poor reputation on Spanish Americans causes Barrientos to isolate herself from the stereotype, by speaking English instead of Spanish. However, society changed: different

In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria,” the incidents on the bus, in the hotel, and at the poetry involved prejudice and stereotypical misconceptions of Puerto Rican women. While Cofer was on a bus trip to Oxford University, a man “broke into an Irish tenor’s rendition of “Maria” from West Side Story” (Cofer 103). This implies that Latinas dealt with people who automatically assume that a Latina’s name is “Maria” or “Evita” based on a fictional movie. While at a hotel with a colleague, a middle-aged man called Cofer an “Evita” and he “began shout-sing a ditty to the tune of “La Bamba”---except the lyrics were about a girl named Maria” (Cofer 107). Then Cofer realized that “[she] was just an Evita or a Maria: merely a character in his cartoon-populated universe” (107). The men that sung stereotypical songs viewed Cofer as a sexual object and referred to her as an image displayed by the media.

     As a young child, Rodriguez finds comfort and safety in his noisy home full of Spanish sounds. Spanish, is his family's' intimate language that comforts Rodriguez by surrounding him in a web built by the family love and security which is conveyed using

In the student essay “It’s Hard Enough Being Me” written by Anna Lisa Raya, the author portrays herself as a credible source for understanding the role of identity in an educational setting. Raya then appeals to an audience of Latinos and other minorities through her emotions such as stating, “I had never questioned who I was or where I was from” (Raya 121). In the end, she resolves the life-longing issues of identity crisis and cultural shock by staying true to herself and “Soy yo and no one else…Punto” (Raya 122). The author asserts the idea of “not only experienced culture shock, but for the first time I had to define myself according to the broad term “Latina”” (Raya 121) throughout the essay. Raya then appeals to her audience through

Judith Ortiz Cofer is a Puerto Rican whose writing often examines the conflict and the beauty of cultures mixing together, as people immigrate to America. Though she exhibits a strong connection to her Latin heritage, she often seems to also resent that part of her life. There are many standards and expectations in the Puerto Rican society which Cofer writes to subvert, viewing them negatively. As a Puerto Rican woman, Cofer often disagrees with the limits and expectations placed on a woman in Puerto Rican society, and this attitude is the subject of much of her work. In “Claims,” the speaker describes “Grandmother.” Cofer uses this poem to illustrate a family and describe an individual, as well as

Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. 2007. On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

Both of these essays reflect on facing prejudice with a particular audience in mind: Cofer’s intended demographic is white men, while Staples is addressing society as a whole, but particularly white women. Cofer wants men to know that Latina women are not the sexual deviants they are stereotyped as; they are not simply the “whore,

Stereotypes are dangerous weapons in our society. “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” is a short essay in which the award winning poet and professor of English, Judith Ortiz Cofer, wishes to inform and persuade the audience that labels and stereotypes can be humiliating and hurtful. The author targets the general public, anyone that doesn’t understand that putting someone in a box because of a stereotype is wrong. Cofer starts out the essay by telling the reader a story with a drunk man who re-enacted “Maria” from the West Side Story, and how angry that made her feel. She continues by explaining how she grew up in the United States being a Puerto Rican girl trying to fit in, but always being labeled as an island girl. Cofer carries on by explaining why Latin people get dressed and act a certain way. Then she recalls some more stereotypical incidents.

Through her personal experiences, Lugo-Lugo reels in her audience by connecting with them emotionally. She recalls many stories of when she was a victim of discrimination due to her race and sex. As a professor, students viewed her differently from her colleagues, due to the fact that she is Latina and a woman. On the first day of classes Lugo-Lugo explains one of the incidents that took place in her classroom, “Student: I do not feel like being in the classroom today, and since my parents pay for your

Judith Ortiz Cofer a Latin American author of short stories, poetry, autobiography, young adult fiction, and essays, as a young child migrated to Mainland America from Puerto Rico with her family, moving into an apartment complex with other people of Latin descent. Although, she spent most of her years in the Continental U.S. her writings are reflective of the strong latin heritage that her mother undoubtedly instilled in her from a young age. This is clear in her short story “Nada” where the narrator makes references to the hispanic community that live at an apartment complex in New Jersey. Cofer’s style of writing and experiences in her life are brought out in this story as well as many more of her writings. She includes some Spanish words throughout the story and ideals of the hispanic culture.

Women themselves perpetuate their inferiority; the author recounts a moment in her life when her emotional connection with her mother was interrupted abruptly by a telephone call from her brother. In this instance, the mother chose to speak with her son, the Chicano, over her daughter, the Chicana.

“Beautiful and Cruel” marks the beginning of Esperanza’s “own quiet war” against machismo (Hispanic culture powered by men). She refuses to neither tame herself nor wait for a husband, and this rebellion is reflected in her leaving the “table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate (Cisneros 89).” Cisneros gives Esperanza a self-empowered voice and a desire for personal possessions, thing that she can call her own: Esperanza’s “power is her own (Cisneros 89).” Cisneros discusses two important themes: maintaining one’s own power and challenging the cultural and social expectations one is supposed to fulfill. Esperanza’s mission to create her own identity is manifest by her decision to not “lay (her) neck on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain (Cisneros 88).” Cisneros’ rough language and violent images of self-bondage reveal the contempt with which Esperanza views many of her peers whose only goal is to become a wife. To learn how to guard her power

In this article, “The Myth of the Latin Woman” Cofer has talked about many incidents from her life where she was talked about, from a young girl the adult life. Ortiz Cofer is so ardent about this topic of stereotyping Latin women because she was a native women of the Puerto Rico area who really grew up in the United States. There is how she witnessed firsthand how hurtful stereotyping could be. In “The Myth of the Latin Woman”, She has repeated use of Spanish words in the essay to shows her audience how proud she is of the Latin heritage. she continuously uses other words, such as Puerto Rican, and Latina to stress the names she heard growing up. Because she has been brought up to love her Latin culture, she was often stereotyped here in the United States. As you can see, this is why she became so involved with trying to bring people so much awareness to the

In her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Dominican author Julia Alvarez demonstrates how words can become strange and lose their meaning. African American writer Toni Morrison in her novel Sula demonstrates how words can wound in acts of accidental verbal violence when something is overheard by mistake. In each instance, one sees how the writer manipulates language, its pauses and its silences as well as its words, in order to enhance the overall mood of each work.