Analysis Of Bettina Restrepo's Illegal

The novel Illegal by Bettina Restrepo is a culture book or can be considered one. The novel talks about a story of a young girl named Nora who comes to the United States of America from Mexico looking for her father. One day money and letters stops coming so Nora and her mother decide they have to go look for him in Texas and that's how the journey begins for Nora and her mother. In this novel we can see two cultures being developed one being the American culture and the other the Mexican culture. The author uses setting,conflict,and dialogue to develop a bridge of two cultures.
Setting can be defined as one of the bridges to develop two cultures. The author uses a lot of examples to show settings as a development of the novel by just reading the description of the novel in the back you can tell you can use settings as a development. For example, in the back it says Nora comes to the United States from Mexico and from there we can see both two setting and two very different cultures. This shows how the author use Mexico and the …show more content…
The author use words in spanish in the title at the beginning of every chapter and also in the book in general this can show the mexican culture and to show the american culture the author uses Nora not understanding the dialogue that well when she gets to Texas. For example, “ Where we going ? asked Keisha. Hambre ? Comida ? Keisha shook her head”. This shows how Nora is trying to communicate but since she doesn't know the language she still uses spanish. You can see dialogue has an impact on you when trying to learn another language. Another example, “ I punted the grapefruit like a futbol and ruby red juice sprayed into the air like droplets of sangre”. This represent how the author uses spanish words to show where Nora comes from. The author also translates the words in the novel so you can see the difference between the two