When No One Came From The Rivera Essay

There are many social issues that affect the individuals in the novel Across a Hundred Mountains, such as, social injustice, poverty, homelessness, prostitution, hunger, depression, alcohol and physical abuse, violence and death. The novel begins with the discovery of the unmarked grave of Juana’s father by the U.S. border. This is the fate many

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

On the eve of the narrator and his family 's departure for the United States after twelve years of residence in Paris, the narrator is being chided by his wife and visiting sister about his nightmares. He is worried about his return to the racist United States after such a long absence and what effect it will have on his multiracial family and his career.

Alma feels afraid, trapped, and insecure about this unknown country, America, when she comes here for the first time. It all makes Alma dreadfully homesick for her friends, neighbors, and family in Mexico because of those bad conditions and the unfamiliar place. She does not know how to speak English; therefore, she has not known any neighbor to talk with. Also, the things do not occur like expectation. In fact, the life in the U.S. is worse than in Mexico. However, even if she knows that, she still makes up her minds to move here. Alma starts missing her former home in Mexico, for her and her husband lived there since they were born. When she stays home by herself, the feeling of missing is stronger than any other

In All American Girl, Alvarez expresses her definition of a native in America, “I wanted stockings make up, store bought clothes; I wanted to look like an american girl,” (Line 1-2). This is saying that she wants to fit in and be normal because she is unhappy with her life. This important because these show Alvarez is very straight-forward when she writs, not beating around the bush. On this subject, in Exile, the author provides her feelings of when they just found out about their escape, “My sisters crying when we turned before the family beach house,” (Line 30-31) . This is showing the emotion of the car ride to the terminal. This is vital to expose the author’s writing style because she is very serious about her writing especially on the theme of immigration. Even though imagery is conveyed in her writing, it isn’t enough to deduce her writing

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.

Family is the first thing anybody grows to know. You become familiarized with the traditions and the people of the unit. In the case of an ethnic family living and growing up in the United States, the unit should be a more joint and stronger community within, and set apart from the rest with its own uniqueness. There should also be a security and comfort entering the home. Yet through the book you begin to see a fissure opening more and more thus separating Richard from his family as he begin to venture out into the “gringo” community. Suddenly the comfort felt in the home diminishes and it becomes awkward. The unity you could sense seems to be no longer present and silence falls over. The community built in order to keep the gringos out is no longer there. In the case of Richard this begins with the start of the path of his education.

In my analysis of this novel, The Adventure of Don Chipote or, When Parrots Breast-Feed by Daniel Venegas, I kept in mind that Nicolás Kanellos put great effort into getting this novel circulated in Spanish and in English. Kanellos argues that Spanish-language immigrant novels more accurately present the “evils” of American society such as oppression of the immigrant workers and deconstructs the myth of the American Dream, which permeates in English-language ethnic autobiographies. I believe Kanellos felt so passionately about circulating this particular novel was due to the fact that in Venegas’ novel we see clear representations of the three U.S. Hispanic cultures that Kanellos presents which are the native, the immigrant, and the exile cultures.

Although the book’s titular character is Oscar de Leon, he shares chapters with his sister, his mother, his college roommate, Yunior (revealed to be the book’s narrator), and his mother’s parents, the Cabrals. By representing a family with different personalities—Oscar is overweight, and nerdy while Lola is powerful and independent, for example—Díaz creates a microcosm for all Dominican immigrants. Each chapter (and character) in the past is melded into the story in the present, and in this way, the momentum and excitement is never lost until the very last

As children grow up in a dysfunctional family, they experience trauma and pain from their parent’s actions, words, and attitudes. With this trauma experienced, they grew up changed; different from other children. The parent’s behavior affects them and whether they like it or not, sometimes it can influence them, and they can react against it or can repeat it. In Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980”, is presented this theme of the dysfunctional family. The author presents a story of an adolescent Latin boy called Junior, who narrates the chronicles of his dysfunctional family, a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic driving to a party in the Bronx, New York City. “Papi had been with

When Alma and her family move to America, they begin their new life in a place that is strange and confusing, one that is unaccommodating, and causes Alma’s misery and guilt to almost overwhelm her. After the Rivera’s first day in America, they find their appartment and try to go to sleep. Arturo and her daughter Maribel fall asleep right away, but Alma lays awake in bed, wondering to herself if they ”had... done the right thing, coming here?” (6). In the morning, they wake up, confused, “bewildered, and disorientated, glancing at one another, darting [their] gazes from wall to wall. And then we remembered. Delaware. Over three thousand kilometers from our home in Pátzuco. Three thousand kilometers and a world away” (6). Alma and Arturo left their home, not because they wanted to come to America, but because they wanted to be able to help their daughter, Maribel. She had an accident that caused a traumatic brain injury, and Alma feels that the accident is her fault, and has been consumed with grief ever since. Although the Riveras came to America to help Maribel, Alma still wonders to herself if it was the

These first moments exemplify the overwhelming cultural process by which Mexican Americans were supposed to reject their cultural origins and embrace "American" norms. Ms. Jimenez embodies the "Mexican de adentro" (class notes) image because she has become acculturated to the definition of an "American" while ignoring her Mexican roots. Though she claims not to speak Spanish, she turns to respond to Mr. Sancho when he says Oiga! which may suggest her suppression of the language but her true knowledge of it. "Spanish speaking citizens consider themselves socially superior to the immigrants and rather pride themselves on being Americans." (Vargas p.206) She is a symbol of a Mexican American "…[who] looks upon themselves as a real American and [who] cordially resents any accusation of lack of patriotism." (Vargas p.239) Unlike Emma Tenayuca, a courageous Chicana who struggled for the voices of her people to be heard and whose fights for the rights of pecan shellers were long and arduous, Ms. Jimenez embodies the opposite. She has no connections with her roots therefore she

Nevertheless, instead of the satisfaction he expected from his wife about her new house, Mamacita seems to feel discontented about it. “She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she cries. I would. Sometimes the man gets disgusted. He starts screaming and you can hear it all the way down the street” (p. 77). Mamacita gets extremely nostalgic about her pink house in Mexico. Her complaints make her now-irritated husband to yell and force her to stay in her house on Mango Street. To make matters even worse, her baby boy begins to imitate an English commercial he has heard on television. The book mentions, “… the baby boy, who has begun to talk, starts to sing the Pepsi commercial… No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into tears. No, no, no, as if she can’t believe her ears” (p. 78). Mamacita’s child has begun to speak English, a language that she can’t interpret at all. The thought that her family relies on English devastates Mamacita, and this makes her feel completely torn apart. In the end, Mamacita refuses to learn English and assimilate to the people around her, so she becomes isolated and lonely.

Julia Alvarez also uses language to show how the four Garcia girls adjust to living in a new, and to them alien, culture. The protagonist in this novel is the family Garcia de la Torre, a wealthy, aristocratic family from the Santo Domingo, who can trace their genealogy back to the Spanish

Throughout the novel, Guilbault portrays the dichotomy of holding on to her family’s Mexican heritage and cultural traditions while also trying to assimilate into American culture. She repeatedly describes situations where she and her parents adapt their personalities to conform in social situations. In a sense they had double identities, one Mexican and one American. When Guilbault was in grade school