Final Thoughts...

The term is coming to an end and I am still trying to articulate my thoughts about everything that we've read and discussed in class. I personally would not have picked up any of these books if I had saw them in a bookstore- but after reading them I found myself enjoying each one of them! Ok, maybe not Marti as much as the others probably due to its level of Spanish .
I am very glad to have read all these books because it allowed me to explore a world that I thought I was unable to relate to. However, reading about their daily struggles and triumphs tugged at my emotions and the fact that their stories were short, and sometimes even fragmented, made me completely drawn to them because the stories were so personal. Each story about Latin-American life was unique because if its details but yet the feeling behind each story represented a whole. When I think back to all the books we've read, all the stories in every book seem to come together to form one giant memory. I don't think about each book with its own title and meaning, rather, I find it hard to differentiate which story belonged to which. And that is what I found the most interesting/important.When the young boy in Y No Se Lo Trago La Tierra reflects all that has happened in the year, it is a compilation of all the fragments and everything becomes a whole. Like in Y No Se Lo Trago La Tierra, i feel that the fragmented stories represent each book that we've read and the final pages represents what I feel right now. All the stories come together as one because I think about how the many voices are conveying the emotion.

and a body to remember with

So far I am really enjoying Carmen Rodriguez' stories. It is really interesting how she writes about her life in Canada, and more specifically, in Vancouver! Every time she mentioned places in Vancouver it was so easy to picture it in my head, such as Stanley Park or Fraser and 49th (close to where i live.)

My favourite chapter in the first half of the book is "Black Hole". Estela describes Canada as a black hole, a place without an image. I can relate to this because when I was younger, my parents told me that we would be moving to Canada and I felt that nothing about Canada stood out to me. I couldn't even imagine how it would look like. When i arrived here I thought that it was so void of spirit and culture, even though Canada is known for its multiculturalism. I feel that because there are so many different cultures here that you can't really immerse yourself in one, or be accepted by everyone. It was so different from where I came and it seemed so cold. I was used to everybody sharing the same culture, values and giving each other a kiss on the cheek to say hello or goodbye. However, like the daughters of Estela I came to really like Vancouver.

The conversations between mother and daughter were disheartening to read. You could see how torn Estela was between her new life in Canada and her old life in Chile. Her mother was thrilled to find that Estela and her husband were off the blacklist and expected that they would be home soon. As a reader you know that Estela would have to make an important decision- to give up her new life in Canada or break her mother's heart. I really hoped that this story was longer so we can see more of Estela's life unravel.

How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

I think that "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" effectively portrayed the internal struggles of a Latin American family trying to assimilate into the US. As we discussed in class, the girls as well as the parents desperately try to fit into the American culture. It is definitely a difficult situation on both sides. The parents want for their children to adapt American culture, but not too much so that they would forget their Spanish heritage. What is considered to be just the right amount of adaptation anyways?

The Garcia family moving to the US all together only caused family conflict and tension. The root of family problems within the family began when they had no choice but to leave the Dominican Republic. In the girls' childhood, they lived a privileged life with maids and an abundance of gifts. However I think that as the girls grew older they grew further apart from each other and from their parents. The necessity for the girls to integrate into American life left them unable to relate to their parents' traditional perspectives. For example, Sofia's departure from her family was due to her father's inability to cope with her sexual expressiveness, causing a serious rift in her family. One point mentioned in class was how could two out of the four Garcia girls be put into mental institutions if the parents had not done anything wrong? I think that having two Garcia girls institutionalized demonstrated just how much the family had drifted apart. The girls being put into institutions demonstrate how their parents were unable to relate and reach out to their daughters emotionally in a time of need. It seems that if a family has been divided culturally, there is no solution to mend it and the gap between the parents and their children will only grow wider with time.

Cisneros part 2

Pleasing book to finish! I find that Cisneros' writing style to be straight from the heart. Her writing consists of a variety of narratives that are extremely convincing. She is able to portray the characters in every short story so that they are distinctive and memorable. The first few stories, "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn", "Eleven", and "Tepeyec", are written in the point of view of children and Cisneros does this very convincingly.
"I'm going to peel the scab from my knee and eat it, sneeze on the cat, give you thee M&M's I've been saving for you since yesterday, comb your hair with my fingers and braid it into teeny-tiny braids real pretty" (pg.5) She is able to show how children are so direct with their words and how they honestly they express themselves. "Well, I couldn't help but feel bad for the dip once she's dead right? I mean, after I got over being mad" (pg.40)
The later stories such as "Never Marry a Mexican" and "Bien Pretty" the narrative switches to adults who are consumed by love and loss. What I love about Cisneros' writing is her attention to detail. For example, in the story "Never Marry a Mexican" she goes into great detail describing where each gummy bear was placed and the sensation it gave to the mistress in the house. One story that seemed to stay in my mind was "There Was a Man, There was a Woman". Although it is a very short story, its simplicity and message was effective. I couldn't stop thinking how two people, who are at the same point in their lives longing for the same thing , will never meet due to the fact that they received their paychecks on different days and so will not visit the bar on the same days.

Woman Hollering Creek Part 1

So far I am really enjoying this book! The short stories in Cisnero's novel are very simplistic in first-person narratives and provide very detailed descriptions. For example, in "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn", a young girl carefully describes everything she knows about Lucy and how she longs to be her good friend. "We're going to run home backwards and we're going to run home frontwards....We're going to wave to a lady we don't know on the bus. Hello!" Cisneros definitely embodies the thoughts of an eleven-year old girl effectively and the simplicity of the language and actions made this chapter in particular very heartwarming!

The first section of the book consist of stories concerning young girls. My favourite chapter has to have been "eleven" because it was intriguining how someone could feel that they are two, three, five, ten, but not eleven!!! I felt sorry for her as she was being embarrassed on the brink of tears on her eleventh birthday, and that she would rather be one hundred and two years old just for her eleventh birthday to be over.

The message I am getting so far from the stories is that these Mexican-Americans are experiencing clashes between their heritage Mexican culture with the demands of American culture. I found this to be particularly true in the chapter "Mericans" where Micaela goes to a Mexican church with her grandmother and cannot relate to the Spanish customs but at the same time she feels out of place in the American society as well.

I have also read The House on Mango Street and I found the language to be very similiar because the story was also told through the eyes of a child.

So far...

So far i have enjoyed all the books we have discussed in class! At the beginning of each book, however, i was a bit skeptical but by the end they all were worth my while to read. Who Would of Thought It? started off a bit slow but when it picked up each short chapter was like an episode from a television drama! Also, beyond the first few chapters I saw that this comedy of romance was about a family on the surface and that its important issues were portrayed through the irony used by the author.
Jose Marti's works were more challenging to read because of its extensive vocabulary but his writing overall was artistic and insanely descriptive! Before reading Marti's work I knew nothing of the Brooklyn Bridge but now I can how much it meant to some people, and especially to Marti.
Y No Se Lo Trago La Tierra was perhaps the most confusing book out of the bunch but I realized that the author made us feel the way the young boy did during his 'lost year'. At first I had a tough time understanding the fragmented stories and trying to figure out who was speaking, but in the end i felt that it was more important to focus on what was being said, rather than focussing on exactly who said it.
Finally, the movie we watched in class "The Salt of the Earth" was very enjoyable. I liked the fact that the message of the movie was completely straight forward because it was a nice break from the books that we have been reading. Also i had a few good laughs and smiles from some overly-cheesy moments :)

Riviera part 2

Although i was COMPLETELY lost during the part of the book, the end was worth all the confusion. The non-chronological order of the book revealed to us how confused the boy was himself and I was certainly able to relate due to the fact that I was utterly confused myself. However, through the simple language and fragmented stories it made the entire meaning of the novel more powerful. Through the eyes of a child we can see the boys' reactions added in with what we know as young adults. The simplicity put in plain view how the campesinos were being mistreated and how disease and poverty affected the young boy's mental state.

The title has always fascinated me because, before reading the book, it seemed as though this was a children's novel so I thought that fantasy would some how be incorporated. Then after reading the background of the author, I thought that the earth "devouring" someone perhaps referred to the physical and natural disasters that Mexican workers had to face everyday working on the earth. However, it was completely different! "...y no se lo trago la tierra" referred to the young boy who was deeply concerned about what would happen to him if he were to speak blasphemy against God. Overall this book helped me see that despite the hardships that the chicanos faced, such as poverty, sickness and mistreatment, they still continued to hope for "the arrival" of their people as a whole