The Book Of Unknown America Analysis

The United States of America has been known to be a land of opportunity and freedom with the persisting idea of the “American Dream”. The "American Dream" is defined as the equal opportunity for all citizens to become successful through hard work and determination. This guarantee of a better life has inspired many generations of immigrants to move to America in order to be included in the dream. Julia Alvarez, the Latina Leader Award winning author, reflects on her own personal experiences of immigrating and assimilating into American society in her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. The novel is about the Garcia family’s life in America before and after they fled from the Dominican Republic to escape the tyrannical dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Alvarez depicts the persistent struggles of racism, inability to find work, cultural identity, and rebellion of which all immigrant families faced while living in America. These struggles as a result can influence one’s perception of the meaning of being an American citizen. Alvarez accomplishes these changing perspectives within the Garcia family by writing the story in a form of a reflection within itself by the characters. The characters share their own perspectives of the meaning of being an American citizen, which indicates that outside influences have shaped each character differently. The Garcia Family 's views of being an U.S. citizen is divided individually based on the

There are a few conflicts in this book after they come here, including positive and negative side of struggle. Alma has been strong-willed after she had been a mother. ¨… It had taken us so long to have her, so

Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.

For example, the first chapters of the memoir are predominately about Grande and her siblings’ experience living with their Abuelita Evila in Mexico. Numerous times throughout these stories, the children were grieving and felt abandoned by their parents, and their grandmother held great resentment towards them. A consequence of this was the siblings losing a part of their childhood, and forced to become adults at a young age. When looking at these accounts, it is important to view this story through the lens of American culture. Grande details her living situations, a house with no running water, scorpions in the room, and only a mattress to share amongst the three siblings. This was in the 1980’s, and in the United States, houses without basic amenities were mostly unheard of. This enforces the appeal to the audience’s pathos and aids them to understand why some people are so willing the make the journey to the United States. (Grande 14, 61)

In Ralph Ellison's "What America Would Be Like Without Blacks" The author describes and analyzes the idea of “purging” African Americans from north America. To support this the author describes how they became deeply ingrained in “white “American culture in a short period of time. They began to influence aspects of society such as speech, music and dance. These changes to society where readily adopted without true origin being noticed. The authors work can be described as opinionated description, because it lacks the objectivism of most expository writing. the author fully describes the idea and he gives support information, but within his word choice it’s clear to the reader that the other has a very strong opinion on the black purge.

In The Book of Unknown Americans the Author, Cristina Henriquez, gives us a real life insight on a family’s story about coming to America and adjusting to the American way of life. Henriquez put the words “It’s not paradise, but at least here I can be at peace” (Henriquez 47) in the mouth of Benny Quinto, an immigrant from Nicaragua. Benny, like many others in the story, came to America to find an “escape” from their native countries. America is sought after by many immigrants for better living conditions, a better life for their families, and like we see in this book, medical treatment. America is seen by immigrants as a place of freedom, promises and opportunities but, that isn’t necessarily true.

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.

Susan N. Herman was elected president for the American civil union, Herman is the chair of Professor Law at Brooklyn Law school which Herman teaches about terrorism and civil liberties. In Rereading America: Cultural contexts for critical thinking and writing Herman uses an effective story to show how the Patriot Act can be a threat to American liberty and how the Patriotic Act can go wrong. After the attack of September 11, 2001 George W. Bush signs the USA Patriot Act. The Patriot Act was signed for America to have the ability to fight terrorism.

“The True American” by Stanford professor Robert Pogue Harrison makes a very true statement about the paradoxes in America. People may believe one thing about how we really try to keep our environment clean and pick up after yourself while others may believe we do not care that much for our environment. They both contradict each other but really they both are correct and that is what Harrison explained in his book.

"Writing with a Difference" in Chapter 1 of Mirror on America emphasizes on getting started in writing (14). Writing is a big task for many of us and starting to write is probably the hardest part. They explain a few methods in order to get moving and start writing, such as brainstorming, which includes doing outlines and clustering or webbing. These methods can help us put our thoughts together and narrow down topics giving us an advantage when writing. "Considering Purpose, Audience, and Attitude" are very important concepts to consider before beginning a paper (16). They break the paper into steps explaining and giving examples of each: hooking the reader, identifying a thesis, supporting the thesis, organizing the content,

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez is told from multiple first person points of view. The speaker is a revolving cast of native Latinos who have come to the United States, and live in the same apartment building. The speakers, or the characters, tell their stories. As the book progresses, it becomes apparent that every speaker has experienced many hardships. The speaker is ambitious, someone who had dreamt of America as their means to make a fortune, become famous, or provide a better life for their family. They each have made sacrifices, and have often encountered long and dangerous journeys in order to reach America. Guatemalan Gustavo Milhojas arrived in the United States to earn more money for his children. In order to

The author, an American historian, argues that Hirohito should be charged with responsibility in war time atrocities even though in some cases he did not order the action. Not only that, he argues that from 1937 to 1945 Hirohito played an important role in decision making and he strongly agreed to attacks and kept seeking Japanese victory, which delayed the Japanese surrender and caused the atomic bombing go Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He further argues that as long as Japanese government and people recognize Hirohito 's responsibility, they will keep escaping from their war responsibility as well. Large argues that Bix focuses too much on Hirohito’s role in national policy making.

The Book of Unknown Americans has given me the curiosity of reading the chapters. Feeling thrilled and impressed by the author’s captivating writing. I am enjoying each chapter and characters. I love how the author grants each character to have a chapter to themselves to explain their own story. That somehow correlates to every character at some given point. A great specific example will be in the passage of Mayor; which states, “But sooner or later all the kids who moved into our part of town showed up at school.” This passage is very effective because it correlates with every chapter. It gives me an important message as a reader; that I am not only reading chapter after another, but that I am starting to connect dots of every characters role

United States of America, year 1931 James Truslow Adam wrote the book The Epic of America, were he coined the most well known phrase of all times, the following is a excerpt straight from his book " the American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" (Truslow, 214). The phrase was well known before 1931, many say that it all started with the colonizers when they arrived, because they believed in the ideology of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And if stratify all the history and the study of Truslow, is how the term American Dream was born, the meaningful statement of this writer and historian changed the world. Many people define the American dream differently, but at the end it’s the same for every person living in the USA; it is the belief that each American has the freedom to pursue a better life. The country has gone through many adversities such as the Great Depression, World War II, Civil Rights Movement, Cold War etc... All of them shaped the United States one way or another. In the 1940s for many the American dream, was waiting anxiously for the war to end, the hope for peace, and receiving their family members back from Europe or Japan. The dark and sad moments lived in those years, did not allow people to think in material possessions. What many Americans dreamt about was, to see their brother, son, cousin, or husband enters through

Industrialization and modernization have many advantages to the modern society. In the novel Arcadian America by Aaron Sachs, the author covers many significant themes such as industrialization, slavery, modernization, urbanization, and women’s rights. Sachs jiggles with different themes and ideas but his main focus is Industrialization and the Arcadian land. Due to immigration and the introduction of new ideas America became heavily industrialized. America as a country has moved away from what is known as a tradition to many crucial groups: celebrating nature. People took another path, they did not appreciate the simple and non-materialistic lifestyle. Although industrialization and modernization have caused many people to walk away from nature, it helped bring many people closer to nature by providing them with shorter, more convenient transportation and safer travel routes.