The My Father Came Before Us

Themes of dislocation and loss through memory are also apparent in the transition of Constancia’s physical appearance to be identical to that of her mother’s. Constancia’s past creeped into her life

Shy is a young Mexican-American who works on a luxury cruise ship during the summer. Carmen is also a Mexican-American cruise ship worker. Their culture and heritage unites them long before they even meet. Another thing that brings these two together is tragedy. Both Shy and Carmen’s families have been impacted by a new and deadly disease called Romero’s Disease. This disease killed Shy’s grandmother and Carmen’s father. Talking and sharing about their losses connects them as a whole,“It went quiet between them for a few long seconds. A shared feeling of loss hanging in the air like gas.” Carmen is very critical to learning about Shy’s past and giving him someone who shares the same feelings.

“On March 20, 2000, he goes to his grandmother Águeda’s house. He stands on the same porch that his mother disappeared from eleven years ago. He hugs Maria Isabel and Aunt Rosa Amelia. Then he steps off” (44).

At the age of five Enrique and his older sister Belky are left behind in Honduras when their mother Lourdes left to America. When Enrique’s mother left he was split-up from Belky who went to live with their aunt Rosa Amelia while Enrique was sent to live with their father. The separation of Enrique from his mother set in motion the path of Enrique’s life. It is not long after Enrique is left in his care that his father

I had asked where she had been. “Out for a stroll, dear.” She lied. I had been betrayed by my love, but she was not at fault, no, she was not. Fortunato was the villain here. I am sure he forced Léonie to do those indecent things. I was not going to let him get away with what he had done to her. I was going to make him pay for the pain he had caused. I would spend hours and hours pondering of how I would make him suffer. Léonie seemed to noticed that I would not sleep at night. I told her what I knew about Fortunato and her. The expression on her face, if only you could have seen it, was not surprising at all. She made up lies about how I was mistaken, but I was not. I know what I saw that

In her essay "Memory and Retelling: The Role of Women in La Casa de Los Espíritus", Susan Frick clarifies Alba’s unique narrative style. She asserts that in Alba’s woman-centered form of narration, she is "tapping into collective memory to evoke and interpret the stories and voices of the past and to learn how best to proceed with her own individual life experience" (Frick 29). Clara, Alba's grandmother, was already in the habit of documenting significant events and afterward, when she was voiceless on purpose, she also detailed insignificances, never suspecting that fifty years later, Alba, her granddaughter, would use her notebooks to regain the past and overcome fears. She struggles, with her grandmother’s diaries, her mother’s letters, and many other family documents, to assemble the family’s story in a way that joins events instead of just recording them. According to Alba and her female relatives, direct history is not the only way to record events, and Alba’s conscious narration of the Trueba family is a more incorporating approach to life and

The reader sympathizes with Enrique as he is making his seventh attempt to reach his mother. It is this small glimmer of hope that propels him through his treacherous journey all though he, yet again, fails. The author uses “pathos,” the emotional appeal, heavily throughout this chapter in order to grab the audience’s attention. She wants the reader to empathize with Enrique, an archetypal martyr with heroic behavior. The narrator describes the cruelty and suffering of the gangsters, bandits, “la migra” and others. “Enrique thinks of his mother…she will never know what happened.”(Nazario) Nazario uses stream-of-consciousness reflections such as this to cause the reader to subsequently reflect on their own families, and how one would react to this circumstance. Although Nazario uses pathetic writing, she does not make a fully-pathos driven argument such as that of Leslie Marmon Silko’s “The Border Patrol State.” In fact, Enrique’s Journey is written in exposition mode with anecdotes within narratives, which purports as journalistic rather than objective, or biased, writing. It is through this writing style that Nazario builds her credibility, or “ethos.” The exposition mode lays out the effects throughout Enrique’s path as well as brings extent of the hazards to fruition for the

In this story, Sonia Nazario recounts how a Honduran boy called Enrique passed many dangerous situations in his travel to the United States in order to finally meet with his mother. Enrique began his travel to the United States eleven years after his mother left him in Honduras. Enrique faced gangsters, bandits and corrupt police officers when he was in the train called “El Tren de la Muerte”. The only thing that he was carrying was his mother’s phone number. But Enrique never gave up. Enrique’s courage, hope and help from strangers make him achieved his goal… meet with his mother.

He took me by the hand, pushing me, making sure I didn’t escape. I knocked on a neighbor's door, they opened the door and I ran inside, letting go of his brother’s hand, grabbed the telephone and called 911. With so much fear I could only hope that my daughter was fine because he didn’t want to give her to me. The police arrived, it was very dark and I could not see that my entire body was bruised. My sister arrived for me like at 4 in the morning because Jose and his brother ran away, but Jose spoke with my sister for me to return (pg 3) with him or he was going to kill me.

Reading this book is an emotional roller coaster ride. At first there was an hollow feeling in my stomach. This was due to all the family related incidents. “Even as scared as I was by the jail, I wanted to sit on the floor outside the cell bars and hold his hand because he needed me” (Jimmy Santiago Baca 2). The quotation shows the bond between father and son. Baca was being self-sacrificing, willing to endure the pain with Damacio in prison. The hollow feeling continued when learning about the hardship that faced Cecilia. “‘You were so drunk you don’t even remember.’ Tears streamed down her cheeks” (Jimmy Santiago Baca 9). I can sympathize for Cecilia because an associate close to me has been a victim of rape. I have witnessed how the event

I haven’t been able to sleep for the past month. I hear my door creak and I look at the door. I see someone open the door very slowly before coming in. I look to see Maria tiptoeing into my room. “What are you doing?” I ask “You know your mom would kill me if she saw us.”

she met in Alaska, felt the same, "you said it was the same for you,

a. While La Luna was telling Harriet about when she first met Arroyo in her car, the old gringo and Arroyo were in his car discussing an unknown topic. Suddenly, the two women hear gunfire and the old gringo stumbles out of Arroyo’s car grasping burnt papers, the papers that Arroyo used to declare ownership of the land stolen from he and others like him, in his hand. Arroyo, filled with rage, continued shooting, even as Harriet “begged him not to kill the only father either of them had ever known” (163). The old gringo fell at last and was dead before he hit the ground.

In this non-fiction historical novel, it allows readers to get a sense of the lives the girls went through. Readers learn from the very beginning something traumatic has happened for only one of the four sisters to be alive. “A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she does not want to be the only one left to tell their story” (Alvarez 10). As the exposition starts off, Dede, the only sister alive, is asked about her sisters which lead to a trip down memory lane. One of the three sisters decides to get married and have children while the other two decide to join the revolution against Trujillo which leads to the conflict of the story. Patria is the oldest of the three who chose to get married at an early age and have children. Dede the second oldest who is the one telling the story. She is also the sister who stayed alive and is the only one who strayed away from

Julia Alvarez begins her story with a sit down interview between Dede and an interested investigator of her family’s story. As they start-up a discussion about her past life, Dede goes on to mention a particular moment in time, in where her father was foretelling the future of his daughters, with interruption