Why Should My Primas Crave Anything Cuban By Roaker

In the first story “Life in the Age of the Mimis” Martinez explains to the reader that his hispanic sisters try to give up their culture and tradition to become valley girls. The author shows the reader that pretending can create delusions that can make one not themselves. In my own experience trying to fit in with people that don’t really get along with your true self is not a real friendship. For example, Martinez tells the reader “Marge and Mare made a conscious decision that they would be rich and white, even if their family wasn’t”(Page

Imagine the pressure of being expected to follow your culture’s traditions even if you want to rebel and create your own identity. Carrying on traditions can be difficult for many young people who are searching for their identities as they grow up. Two texts, “Life in the age of the mimis” by Domingo Martinez and “El Olvido” by Judith Ortiz, tell about the struggles of losing one’s culture. One shows the reader that forgetting your own roots simply because of being ashamed or embarrassed can really harm you, while the other demonstrates that forgetting your culture for the sake of fame and fortune can also do the same damage.

The American Minority Authors opens the reader eyes of the struggles of acceptance within the society, and how their heritage and their American culture can coexist. Minority writers, Cisneros, Eastman, and McKay, through their stories, give us insight of their cultural heritage and the struggles they have with society embracing diversity. In Sandra Cisneros, story “Geraldo No Last Name”, speaks of a Latino immigrant who does not speaks English living in America. The narrator of the story even put a label on him calling him a ”brazer”(Cisneros,1989, para 4), is a slang word for a migrant worker(Garling, 2007).

In the story “Antojos’” by Julia Alvarez, the main character, a wealthy Dominican woman named Yolanda, travels to the Dominican Republic in order to search for her cultural and personal identity. Her difficulty interacting and relating to her old family members before she immigrated to America reflects the emotional hardship of immigration.

It is not just the language of the Dominican culture that we find characters struggling to hold onto in Díaz’s Drown. We also find that the characters walk a fine line of defining themselves as newly Dominican American, and it seems they feel pressured to leave behind their old ways and traditions to join their new society. In the short story “Fiesta, 1980,” we find many examples of the family being torn between their Dominican customs and assimilating to their new American life. This story begins with the explanation of Papi’s most prized possession: a brand-new, lime-green, Volkswagen van. Much to Yunior’s chagrin (due to the fact that he gets sick every time he rides in the vehicle), this van means a lot to Papi, because to him, it represents an American family. According to John Riofrio (2008), “it[the van] is the embracing of the American way which has reenabled Papi’s masculinity,” (p. 33). After arriving at their Tia and Tio’s home for the party, Yunior sneers at his relatives’ apartment stating, “the place had been furnished in Contemporary Dominican Tacky” (p. 32). It seems as though Yunior, after only a short period in America, is already feeling embarrassed by his culture’s traditions. This chapter of the book also discusses the betrayal of Yunior’s father to his family, by having an affair with a Puerto Rican woman, whom

The novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, illustrates these challenges. Throughout the novel, we see how different aspects of culture shock impact the Garcia family. In this essay I will discuss how particular events change each family member’s Dominican cultural values and identity.

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.

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.

Julia Alvarez’s book, How the García Girls Lost their Accents, illustrates the struggle of finding an identity as an immigrant. The four girls, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia seem to be lost in their new American culture but even more lost in their home culture as adults. Finding what culture they belong to is a lifelong struggle that results in acculturation, deculturalization and culture shock.

Julia Alvarez displays a beautifully written piece of literature in “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”, describing a family's experience during the revolution in the Dominican Republic and how these drastic changes to their lives impacted them individually. In this piece of literature Julia actively portrays Dominican teenagers adjusting to American life and desperately trying to discover themselves as they’re struggling to comply with their parents strict rules and Americans heinous ridicule and judgement. Alvarez is often congratulated for accurately portraying the cultural shift majority of foreigners are impacted by, and especially those who’ve shared similar experiences with the Garcia family such as being pushed away from their homes and sense of security, family, and everything they’ve known since they were kids solely by the cruel revolution going on there during that time. In the beginning of the book, Alvarez begins with Yolanda finally returning back home to the Dominican Republic for

Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban tells the story about three generations of a Cuban family and their different views provoked by the Cuban revolution. Though part of the same family, an outsider might classify them as adversaries judging by relationships between one another, the exiled family members, and the differentiations between political views. Although all of these central themes reoccur over and over throughout the narrative, family relationships lie at the heart of the tale. The relationships between these Cuban family members are for the most part ruptured by any or a combination of the above themes.

In “How the Garcia Girls lost their accents” Carla Garcia’s cultural identity depends mostly on her background. In the beginning of the story the Garcia’s are celebrating their anniversary and they are asked to make a wish, “‘Dear God’, she began. She could not get used to this American wish-making without bringing God into it. ‘Let us please go back home,please,’”(226).

In The Crystal Frontier, Carlos Fuentes presents two of his main characters in much a similar fashion; in Spoils, we find Dionisio is a world-renowned chef and cuisine connoisseur, and also a fervent critic of American cuisine and culture. Dionisio believes that through his country’s chromosomal imperialism, Mexico will be able to solidify its sphere of influence in America; however, when he travels to the United States, he indulges in the same institutions that he ridicules when he lives in Mexico. Similarly, in Pain we encounter the young and aspiring doctor, Juan Zamora. Zamora is an ambitious student who travels to the United States to further his education and learns that successful networking is the way to get ahead in American society. Zamora and Dionisio are both functions of their environment. When they are living in America, they are exhibiting an innate interconnectedness with society, and when they live in Mexico—quite the opposite; Zamora and Dionisio display traditional attributes which are stereotypical to that of the Mexican who lives in solitude. This essay will seek to dissect each character and describe how each utilizes his own respective “Mexican Mask” to acquire what he truly desires, and it will describe how each character’s personality fluctuates simply due to where he is geographically located.

After being much pressured from his family, the boy has no choice other than to drink the “potion, familiar / from soda fountains in Brooklyn” (12-13). From the boy’s perspective, we can clearly see his emotional dissatisfaction as he states, “he was bored with this potion” (12). Espada’s comparison of Coca-Cola to “potion” suggests that the people of Puerto Rico are deeply mesmerized by American products, and that they are incapable of recognizing the copious amounts of goods that Puerto Rico has to offer to its people. The speaker emphasizes the significance of American culture on the Puerto Rican citizens and outstandingly illustrates the influences and effects of Americanization. These effects are clearly evident even with the older generation

Loraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in The Sun” and Milcha Sanchez-Scott’s “The Cuban Swimmer” both capture the authors’ past experiences of oppression, and convey their struggles with identity. Both authors are from minority cultures, and both describe the same harsh pressures from the dominant culture. Both author’s share situations of being outcasts, coming from different racial backgrounds and trying to triumph over these obstacles.