The Memoir Of A Brown Buffalo

The author of Honor and the American Dream, Ruth Horowitz, takes us to Chicago’s Chicano community of 32nd Street in the

For Perez, Chicana/o history is not resolvable and must continually be debated and comprehended as multiple and unstable. Perez, like other Chicana theorists, initiates an added dimension that recognizes that woman’s voices and their stories have become subordinated to a colonist racial mentality and to a male consciousness. Perez argues that the quintessential historical accounts. Women become appendages to men’s history, the interstitial ‘and’ tacked on as an afterthought’ (12). Nevertheless, Perez also suggests that even though some stories have not been told, does not define their existences, asserting, “Chicana, Mexican, India, Mestiza actions, words spoken and unspoken, survive and persist whether they are acknowledged or not” (7). The task of locating the voices of the Chicana are often discharged or lowered by the dominant groups.

The essays, “My Kiowa Grandmother,” by N. Scott Momaday and “Take My Saddle from the Wall: A Valediction,” by Larry McMurtry, both seek to understand the values and traditions of an old way of life that has been lost to the trials and tribulations of time. By reaching back into history through their families, both authors achieve the same effect, while using starkly contrasting narrative structure; they show the characteristics that have been lost to younger generations.

The American Bison, more commonly known as the Buffalo is a humpbacked wild ox. Historically, the American bison played an important role in the Great Plains. They graze on native grasses and actually disturb the soil with their hooves which allows plant and animal species to flourish. Prairie dogs prefer areas grazed by bison where the grass is short so they can keep a lookout for hungry predators, and wolves once relied on bison herds as a major food source. Today, wild bison are beginning to return, mainly in national parks but they still need to more room to roam as they are still being hunted outside the park’s safe borders.

Throughout this course, there has been multiple themes of survival in the stories. Before they were forced to survive other than their natural way, was when the white settlers came to towards the west. They lived peacefully in these lands for thousands of years until the settlers came. As these white settlers from afar became aware of the Native people, they brought on them unyielding beliefs that would soon cause major conflicts between the two groups. It was crystal clear that the settlers and the Natives could not live amongst each other with peace, because of their different views towards, religion, land, and respect. Destruction of the Natives way of living would engulf them in a survival situation they had never previously experienced or heard of.

During the 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t the only one occurring. Struggling to assimilate into American culture, and suppressed by social injustices convicted by their Anglo counterparts, the Chicano movement was born. In the epic poem “I am Joaquin” written by Rodolfo Gonzales in 1969, we dive into what it means to be a Chicano. Through this poem, we see the struggles of the Chicano people portrayed by the narrator, in an attempt to grasp the American’s attention during the time of these movements. Hoping to shed light on the issues and struggles the Chicano population faced, Gonzales writes this epic in an attempt to strengthen the movement taking place, and to give Chicanos a sense of belonging and solidarity in this now

Pancho, McFarland. Chicano Rap: Gender and Violence in the Postindustrial Barrio. University of Texas Press, 2012 . Print

Racism is an issue that blacks face, and have faced throughout history directly and indirectly. Ralph Ellison has done a great job in demonstrating the effects of racism on individual identity through a black narrator. Throughout the story, Ellison provides several examples of what the narrator faced in trying to make his-self visible and acceptable in the white culture. Ellison engages the reader so deeply in the occurrences through the narrator’s agony, confusion, and ambiguity. In order to understand the narrators plight, and to see things through his eyes, it is important to understand that main characters of the story which contributes to his plight as well as the era in which the story takes place.

In George J. Sanchez’s, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles 1900-1945, Sanchez brings forth a new understanding of Mexican-American culture through the presentation of how the culture made substantial adaptations under limited economic and social mobility (Sanchez 13). Unlike other historians who studies the variations of Mexican American cultural identity from a national prospective , Sanchez creatively selects Los Angeles as his site of research because, not only is the city home to the largest Mexican population in the United States, but also because Latinos play a profound role in shaping the city’s culture. Growing up in an immigrant family himself, Sanchez undoubtedly has many personal

In Brian Copeland’s memoir, “Not a Genuine Black Man: My Life as an Outsider”, he vividly shares to what kind of racism and treatment that he and his family have gone through in a white community in San Leandro, CA during the 70’s. Through an ethnic studies lens, we can see clearly that indeed, the treatment of most Americans or “whites” toward African-American or “blacks” are hostile. There’s an invisible gap between two races, and Being an African-American

Patrick J. Carrol’s Felix Longoria’s Wake: bereavement, racism, and the rise of Mexican American activism is a book of significance in the fight for equal rights for all Americans especially people of minority ethnicities like Mexican Americans. Carrol takes the reader on a tour of South Texas, where Mexicans and Anglos are segregated by train tracks whether that be schools, housing and even the cemetery where after death Mexican Americans are being segregated and discriminated against. The Mexican American activism fire grows red hot when Felix Longoria a private in the United States Army is killed in active duty during the Second World War on November 11, 1944 in the Philippines. When his body is set to be reburied in his hometown of Three Rivers, only to be rejected twice by the undertaker Tom Kennedy, who just recently purchased the chapel, because white people in the town would not like a Mexican American to use the chapel. This revelation of discrimination, racism and ethnocentrism in the small town of Three Rivers will lead Felix Longoria family, Dr. Hector P. Garcia and LBJ on a three to four months crusade on a national level and local level fight for Mexican American civil rights in South Texas. Even though Private Felix Longoria never gets the wake he is rightfully deserved, he is buried with full military honors.

With this came a patriarchal movement with the anthem “Yo soy Chicano” and an ideology of “Chicano = Machismo”. Women within the Chicano movement were afforded one of three roles: mothers, nuns or whores. They were not allowed self determination. This stemmed from the idea that men were the ones that were rising against oppression, when in fact women “broke their shackles and stabbed the spirit of injustice when confronted in the fields by a shotgun, when bloodied on the streets”, when constructed under the violence of “Anglo/chauvinism or Chicano machismo.” The transition from Chicano to Chicana was in protest of previous marginalization and a step towards representation and manifestation. (I Throw Punches, Chabram,

Black Elk plays a major role in retelling the history of the Lakota Native Americans. Having witnessed the Battle of Little Bighorn and living through the transfer of Native Americans to the Pine Ridge Reservation, Black Elk can attest to the treatment endured by Native Americans. Black Elk tells the story of a people injured in war and subject to sufferings for the years to follow.

Within this anthology, the authors detail how Buffalo Soldiers contributed to "every war on American soil and abroad with little recognition. They served for less pay, served under white leadership, and served only under dire circumstances." Unlike most books that focus on the skirmishes between Buffalo Soldiers and Indians, it analyzes the black soldiers' service throughout the western territories. The authors' provide detailed accounts of how Buffalo Soldiers prepared the western frontier for white settlement: escorting trains and stagecoaches; staffing garrisons; guarding railroad construction and protecting military supply lines and survey teams. This book contains a compendium of the rich contributions Africans Americans patriots and westward expansion.

Mexican Americans in Texas have a long and detailed history spanning from the arrival of Cortez all the way to the present day. Through historical events, the culture and identity of Mexican Americans have shifted, diverted, and adapted into what people chose to identify as. The rise of the Chicano identity during the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement was an adaptation as a culture to oppressive and unjust treatment from white, Anglos that had almost all political and social power over all minorities. To stop the oppressive voices from silencing and oppressing the Mexican Americans, they had to stand up to fight for their rights as American citizens that also had Mexican or Spanish heritage to be proud of. In Oscar Zeta Acosta’s novel, The Revolt of the Cockroach People, he dives into the Chicano Movement as a witness and an active participant. His larger than life character is on the front lines of the movement and examines the shift in identity among the group. It was particularly rising of their Chicano identity that gave the people cause to organize politically and socially in order to fight for a worthy cause.