The Hammon and the Beans by Americo Paredes Essay

Tamales have the power of merging family. Christmas eve in Mexico means interacting and bonding with the whole family. When the holiday season begins and everybody gathers at Grandmother’s house you can trace the smell of tamales getting cook in the kitchen mixed with the smell of cinnamon. The Christmas tree is bursting with presents and on the side the nativity scene which is always present in a Catholic Mexican family. The table is brimming in flavors, with a variety of dessert and snacks and delicious hot drinks. As appetizing as the table looks the whole family is barely touching the food because the tamales are almost ready and everybody wants to eat as many tamales as possible. When the tamales are ready it means that Christmas Eve celebration is staring. Everyone from the oldest in the house to the youngest gets a plate and eats as many tamales as possible while sharing stories and laughs. The tamales are the main guest of the celebration. The tamales are a traditional Mexican food that can be traced to the Aztecs. The word tamale comes from the Aztec word tamalii which means wrapped food. The Aztec women would cook the tamales for the soldiers because they were easy to carry and eat. Today making tamales is a bonding event for all the women in the family,

Chay begged his uncle to let him go to the hospital, but his uncle said “no”, and assured Chay that after school he would pick him up and take him to see his

Tita is born prematurely crying on the kitchen table in the De la Garza household. Pedro Muzquiz asks for Tita’s hand in marriage, to which Mama Elena refuses and suggest Rosaura. Rosaura De la Garza and Pedro Muzquiz are married. Nacha dies, clutching a picture of her fiancé. After eating Tita’s Quail in Rose Petal Sauce, Gertrudis becomes overcome with sensual desire, the quail acting as an aphrodisiac, she is then taken away by one of the Pancho’s Villa’s men. Pedro and Rosaura’s first child is born, to which Tita becomes attached to the child, as if Roberto is her own. Roberto dies from lack of proper nutrition. Tita becomes sickly and is taken in by John. Mama Elena dies. Rosaura dies. Alex and Esperanza get married. Tita and Pedro have

“Plantation Life” told by Rachel Adams. Rachel was born into slavery in Putman County close to Eatonton, Georgia. Rachel had a mother and father but her father was sold when she was a baby. Her mom’s job was to weave clothes and many times Rachel got to wear the clothes. Rachel grew up with 17 children and only one of them being a boy. They lived in small log cabins, their beds and pillows were made from old hay. Rachel says as children they were fed cornbread and potlicker, adults were fed meat, greens, and cornbread. Marse Lewis Little and Miss Sallie were the owners. Marse Lewis was kind to his slaves. The overseer, however, was cruel and if they didn’t do what he wanted, they would be whipped. Slaves were also whipped if they didn’t do their task in a certain amount of time. Some slaves learned how to read and write while others didn’t. Rachel

Food and family tradition are important for this story, since the food is seen as a way of communication and family tradition as an obstacle within Tita’s life. Ever since she had been born, her closeness to food was seen from that very moment. In the first "scene" of the book, this can be seen. “Tita made her entrance into this world, prematurely, right there on the kitchen table amid the smells of simmering noodle soup, thyme, bay leaves, and cilantro, steamed milk, garlic, and of course, onion” (Esquivel, 5-6). This shows how she connects to food, and this connection only grows more throughout the story. Although, later on Tita is able to mix her own feelings within her food preparation helping her communicate what she feels. When she is cooking is also gets emotionally involved, therefore this lets her mix her feelings in the recipe as well.

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’ Connor, is about a family going on a trip from Georgia to Florida. The grandmother, who is old-fashion in her beliefs, tells her grandchildren stories on the road trip; one story leads them down a dirt road to find a house on an old plantation, which produces an unpleasant outcome. The author uses the grandmother’s voice and language to give an old southern appeal to the story, which causes the impression that those who live like her are considered more acceptable.

The 1959 novel, Pocho, by José Antonio Villarreal is an insightful cultural exposition told primarily from the vantage point of Richard Rubio, the coming-of-age son of immigrant Mexican parents who eventually settle in Santa Clara, California, after many seasons of migrant farm work. Although fiction, the story likely mirrors some of the experiences of the author who was born to migrant laborers in Los Angeles in 1924 and was himself a "pocho" - a child of the depression era Mexican-American transition. ("I am a Pocho," he said, "and we speak like this because here in California we make Castilian words out of English words." p 165)

In the detailed story of an impoverished family during the late 1900’s, Jeannette Walls describes her experience from the young age of 3, up until adulthood. The family of 6, with Rex Walls as the father, Rose Mary as the mother, and her three siblings, Lori, Brian and Maureen, were constantly moving throughout the country with little to no food or cash. The memoir shows how dysfunctional the family was, but never seemed to force the reader to condemn the parents. In a life of poverty, the have to move for own to town, and often lived in various mining towns. Although they each found something they learned to love (like Jeannette’s rock collection) in the desert, they had to leave them behind once Rex’s alcoholism only worsened, and they ran

The narrator grew up in poverty. The narrator should feel even more at home at Marys’ when she is serving Cabbage soup because that’s how he grew up. He knows she is short on money just like he is. He feels bad that he’s not doing his part and helping out with the money. This represents all the turmoil and hard times that have happened. Somewhere in chapter 21 they talk about rotting cabbage and this represents how he grew up eating cabbage; his past, and now he has rotting cabbage; his future. This shows how the past is fading and things are changing.

Besides her love for Pedro, one other thing is constant in this film and that is Tita’s love for cooking. Learning how to cook from the ranch’s elderly maid Nacha from a very early age, Tita becomes known for her delicious dishes and eventually becomes the head cook of the ranch after Nacha dies. It’s almost as if seems Tita was fated to become a master in the kitchen. One of the very first scenes of the movie is of Mama Elena giving birth to her on a kitchen table where

“Aguantando” means holding on. In the very first paragraph we see how important it is for the narrator, Yunior, to hold on to his father’s memory. Yunior lives with his mother (Mami), grandfather (Abuelo) and brother (Rafa). They live in a house where anything of value, including furniture, food, clothing and even Mami’s Bible is stained from a leaky roof. As a Hispanic male, believe me when I tell you there is nothing more sacred than Mami’s Bible in that home. Yet it is clear how important Papi’s pictures are because they’re always in a plastic sandwich bag to keep them dry. It’s also clear that Papi leaving was the

The setting in this story is a small town in rural Oklahoma in the late hot

Imagine walking into a deserted town, exhausted from the scorching rays of the sun. It becomes more and more difficult to muster up the last ounce of energy to take another step, and eventually you drop to the ground. In this example setting is enhanced in a way that a tone of hopelessness for the character is developed. First, the setting is developed in a manner that places a hardship on the character. Furthermore, the town is devoid of life ensuring that any help to the character is out of the question and the sun itself is creating the hardship for the character. Similarly, Juan Rulfo uses the setting of his novel, Pedro Páramo, in order to influence the tone, which ultimately leads to his purpose of writing the novel. Comala, the

Sandro Botticelli painted La Primavera between 1477 and 1482 for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a member of the powerful Florentine family. While many Renaissance works depicted scenes of Christianity, this work as well as the others in its group – The Birth of Venus, for example - are focused around tales from classical mythology. Designed to hang in a private room, the painting did not need to be made accessible to large audiences like other works of the time, such as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. An educated family with strong Humanistic ties, the Medici would have had the necessary knowledge to interpret the painting’s subject, while the common people would not have. Now located in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence,

Imagine racism taking over the world, with overwhelming thoughts about how you might be the next victim. Quarrels about whether the best skin is black or white, but always resulting that white is right. Hope would evaporate from an evanescent cloud and Faith became instinct as it was replaced by agony. Everywhere you turned around for help, all you saw were the bodies of those neglected and lynched. Abel Meeropol published the poem Strange Fruit in 1937, after seeing a drastic picture of lynching that traumatized him ever since then. As a result, the poem became a memory to all those who died and is momentous to our history.