Song Of The Humming Bird Summary

“Song of the Hummingbird” was written by Graciela Limon . The book is about an Aztec princess Huitzitzilin who talks about what happens to her during the Spanish conquest. Huitzitzilin decided to tell her story to Father Benito who is one of the main characters in the book. At the end of the book, Huitzitzilin dies and Father Benito finally sees the truth through her eyes and her story. The main idea or the lesson that this book is trying to teach a person is that you should not automatically judge a person until you get to know them. The book “Song of the Hummingbird” caused me to have a rollercoaster of emotions and the lesson that I liked the most from this book was that you should give someone a chance before you judge them. The lesson that the book teaches the students is that you need to have the strength and you need fight for what you believe in no matter what the punishments are.

In the book the “Song of the Hummingbird “written by Graciela Limon, the main conflict between Father Benito and Huitzitzilin regarding to what history is, is that they both come from different worlds/times, the Spanish were Eurocentric, and their religion was different. Father Benito, a monk who is called to a convent near Mexico City in 1583. Huitzitzilin an elderly woman is asking for a confessor. In her first confession, he discovers that she had information of the invasion of Cortes and the Spanish. Although the story it is told quite different from what he had read and learned in Spain. He forcefully listens to her confessions and also writes down her perspective as to what really happened when Cortez arrived and took their land.

Imagine living in a civilization that practiced human sacrifice and ritual dances, and then one day that civilization no longer exists because another culture decided to conquer them. These people are known to modern society as the Aztecs. In Graciela Limon's novel, Song of the Hummingbird, she illustrated how a culture like the Aztecs or Mexica, can quickly diminish when there are people such as the Spanish that have very limited understanding about certain subjects. Some people may say that the Aztecs were slaughtered because the Darwinian principle of natural selection even applies to mankind. This concept was perceptible when the Spaniards marched with horses, advanced technology, and armor. But through this novel,

Leon-Portilla based the stories told in this book upon old writings of actual Aztec people who survived the Spanish massacres. The actual authors of the stories told in this book are priests, wise men and regular people who survived the killings. These stories represent the more realistic view of what really happened during the Spanish conquest. Most of the history about the Aztec Empire was based on Spanish accounts of events, but Leon-Portilla used writings from actual survivors to illustrate the true history from the Indians’ point of view.

The “Hummingbird’s Daughter” by Luis Alberto Urrea proved to be a novel full of Mexican culture and identity, focusing on such intricate detail all the way through. One character in particular, Don Tomas Urrea who is the father of Teresita, plays a very important role throughout the book being a father, for Teresita, a friend for some, and a ‘patron’ for most. Although at the start of the book this man is not fairly distinguished, reading deeper into the novel the reader is slowly hooked to how humble and courageous Don Tomas can be. Being the head of the family a lot is expected of Don Tomas, he has to be fierce in front of his men, at the same time a good leader for his workers, and eventually up to the point of playing the role of a father to his unexpected daughter Teresita.

Miguel Leon-Portilla author of Broken Spears- The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, tells the story of the Spanish conquest over the Aztecs from the Aztec point of view. It is more familiar in history that the Spanish led by Hernan Cortez defeated the Aztecs with a powerful army and established an easy victory all while having intentions to gain power and greed. However, Leon-Portilla focuses on the Aztec Empire and their story. Leon-Portilla does a great job giving readers the real occurrences and events from Aztec members. This paper argues that history must be told from all sides. It is more common to hear about the Spanish conquest

Although I can’t specifically relate to Gloria Anzaldúa’s struggle between her languages in “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” I can relate to her “kind of dual identity” in which she identifies with neither Anglo-American cultural values nor Mexican cultural values (1566). Being half white, half Chinese, I struggle identifying as either identity, especially because my mom (who is Chinese) never learned Cantonese and largely became Americanized in her childhood. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in when racial and ethnic identity are so significant in America and when I must interact with the world as part of both the majority and the marginalized. Considering my own struggle and the conflict Anzaldúa describes, it became clearer to me the way race relations in American not only marginalize people of color but train our consciousnesses to damage ourselves. Before I turn back to Anzaldúa, a novel I’ve recently read, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams has also been on my mind, particularly in Godwin’s portrayal of how police surveillance transforms us into agents of our own oppression. Although Caleb is a white man, he also experiences a split consciousness as his values and characteristics are whittled away by the paranoia of constant surveillance.

The book setting takes place in Mexico City in 1583 at a convent. Father Benito Lara was a Franciscan monk around 27 years old with a medium build, lean, clear tone, chestnut color hair thin to baldness identifying himself as the new confessor at the convent. The father was approached a private corner where an older woman Huitzitzilin 82 years old also known as Hummingbird frail with yellowish tone skin, small face, skeletal, dark marks, stringy white hair waiting to stated her last confession. Openly of her conversation with the father, Huitzitzilin describes her people splintered by the Spaniards, cast out, rooted out and beaten. The people had suffered from hunger and pestilence and felt like foreigners in their own rural area, these were powerful words coming from Huitzitziln. Zintle was the cousin of Huitzitziln and her first love during the Spanish Conquest of Mexico also the father to her unborn child. Huitzitzilin was different from others that was instructed about the aborigines of Mexico because the way she spoke about cultural repression of European religious, the struggle between gender oppression and duties of being a woman. Women are considered of less importance even in our world today, where we are supposed to have equality.

The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner explores evolution through the most famous examples in history—the finches of the Galápagos Islands. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the process of evolution are applied directly to what scientists refer to as Darwin’s Finches. Weiner follows scientists Peter and Rosemary Grant as they study the finches in real time on the Galápagos. Years of previous work, study and data is collected and analyzed. Different species of animals are observed and explained throughout history. The Grants have one goal, and that is to find the origin of the species, how organisms first began. They find that it really is about the “survival of the

portray the early life of Ernesto Galarza, it also does a tremendous job of capturing the essence of

In this Chapter I feel that Anzaldua is trying to get the reader to understand the differences and atruggles amongst cultures. The clash of cultures results in mental and emotional confusion. Living inbetween more than one culture, you often get opposing messages from these cultures. Sometimes when living within the Chicana culture common white beleifs conflict with the beleifs of the Mexican culture. They both hold beleifs of the indifinous peopel and their culture. It creates a problem that the dominant cultures views and beleifs are defiant to the others. This is very wrong because it creats the problem of one being superior to the other. This especially relates to the Mexican culture and white culture. This creates the assimilation problem when one culture is not accepted or considered below another.

The Novel “Song of a Humming Bird” by Graciela Limón is an outstanding novel that emphasis on an elderly Indian woman. Who is close to her death and is inclined to come to church for forgiveness for thy “sins” she has committed. This book is focused how Indian women lived back in the 50’s. It mentions two different opinions from an Indian and a Spaniard. I enjoyed this book a lot it gave me an inside of what happened back in the 50’s. I will be describing the difference between two main characters in the book, the challenges the main character faced (Huitzitzilin) through the whole book. As well the culture for both characters. I liked how the author (Graciela Limón) started current and then talked about the past while being in the

Dinaw Mengestu, Richard Rodriguez and Manuel Munoz are three authors that have been through and gone through a lot of pain to finaly get accepted in their societies. They are all either immigrants or children of immigrants that had trouble fitting in America’s society at the time. They struggled with language and their identities, beucase they were not original from the states and it was difficult for others to accept them for who they are. They all treated their problems differently an some tried to forget their old identeties and live as regulalr Americans others accepted themselves for being who they are, but they all found a way to deal with their issues.

Joe Milosch was born in 1947 in Detroit Michigan and formally educated in the public schools and at San Diego State University. He has multiple nominations for the Pushcart and received the Hackney Award for Literature, and the Mira Costa Excellence in Literature award. He was First Runner up in the Steve Kowit Poetry Contest and has won the Tennessee Middle State University Chapbook Award. He was a finalist in the Chapel Jazz Poetry Award and the Tennessee Middle State University Chapbook Award. Poetic Matrix published two collections of his poetry: The Lost Pilgrimage Poems, and Landscape of a

This paper will analyze Anna Fekete in “The Hummingbird”, “The Defenceless” and “The Exiled” by Kati Hiekkapelto. These are the books in the Anna Fekete series and are of the Nordic Noir genre. I will first discuss how Anna is a merge of first generation and second generation of female detectives. I will then examine how her change in perspective on the significance of family and relationships throughout the series have led to this merge.