Jose Ramos
Latin 125/1800
Prof. Gonzalez
Bodega Dreams Bodega Dreams is a novel written by Ernesto Quiñonez who teaches in the South Bronx, not far from the Schomburg Projects in East Harlem where he grew up and near where Bodega Dreams is set. Bodega Dreams occurs not in an activist age but as part of commodity culture, as Quiñonez himself well understands, for it is the difference between social involvement and personal exaggeration that lies at the heart of this touching and clearly written novel. The novels narrator, Julio Mercado, whose nickname is Chino, is a first-person character. Chino like Quiñonez himself is a former graffiti artist, the son of an Ecuadorian father who fled to the United States following an anticommunist revolution …show more content…
Chino has a strong desire to live the American Dream yet he still cannot separate himself from that other world which is more familiar to him. As already discussed, he is married to a woman that signifies some features of the American dream and with the prospect of having a child on the way he sees that the way to succeed is to follow the prescribed steps to achieve success. The problem is that he is surrounded by elements that make him think it is all a waste of time. At one point, he thinks to himself how tiresome it all seems when he think about how he’ll, “Graduate, get a good job, save, buy a house—[but] those ways were all slow” (160). Even though by the end of the book he has resolved his desires to some extent, he can never really exist in one world entirely, especially if he is living the same area. In this way the end of the book is somewhat uncertain since the reader does not know how he will ultimately balance these two ways of living. Having two different ways of living, thinking, and even speaking is absolutely a theme in Bodega Dreams. This book does not discuss race as simply an issue of skin color, but as a matter that is symbolized by all aspects of the way a person presents him or herself. Therefore, when Bodega says that a new race can be created by language, he is addressing the idea that race is no longer something so cut and
Latin 125/1800
Prof. Gonzalez
Bodega Dreams Bodega Dreams is a novel written by Ernesto Quiñonez who teaches in the South Bronx, not far from the Schomburg Projects in East Harlem where he grew up and near where Bodega Dreams is set. Bodega Dreams occurs not in an activist age but as part of commodity culture, as Quiñonez himself well understands, for it is the difference between social involvement and personal exaggeration that lies at the heart of this touching and clearly written novel. The novels narrator, Julio Mercado, whose nickname is Chino, is a first-person character. Chino like Quiñonez himself is a former graffiti artist, the son of an Ecuadorian father who fled to the United States following an anticommunist revolution …show more content…
Chino has a strong desire to live the American Dream yet he still cannot separate himself from that other world which is more familiar to him. As already discussed, he is married to a woman that signifies some features of the American dream and with the prospect of having a child on the way he sees that the way to succeed is to follow the prescribed steps to achieve success. The problem is that he is surrounded by elements that make him think it is all a waste of time. At one point, he thinks to himself how tiresome it all seems when he think about how he’ll, “Graduate, get a good job, save, buy a house—[but] those ways were all slow” (160). Even though by the end of the book he has resolved his desires to some extent, he can never really exist in one world entirely, especially if he is living the same area. In this way the end of the book is somewhat uncertain since the reader does not know how he will ultimately balance these two ways of living. Having two different ways of living, thinking, and even speaking is absolutely a theme in Bodega Dreams. This book does not discuss race as simply an issue of skin color, but as a matter that is symbolized by all aspects of the way a person presents him or herself. Therefore, when Bodega says that a new race can be created by language, he is addressing the idea that race is no longer something so cut and