The United States of America is said to be the melting pot, but Oscar de Leon would disagree. Immigrating to the United States is not an easy transition, especially when an induvial is trying to identify themselves within a new nation. Do they follow a new path or do they follow their ancestor 's path and continue to follow in their family and cultural footsteps? They yearn to find who they are. But for some characters such as Oscar de Leon, they refuse to change the person they are. Not only is it a challenge for them to identify themselves in a new foreign land, they are posed with other challenges such as discrimination, language and cultural barriers. If they are able to push through those things and find the light on the other side of
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In the book he does that because he is trying to bring together two separate worlds and languages and mesh them together, much like what it is for a person immigrating to the United States of America. He reduces strain between the two cultures by creating the use of Spanglish. Though many American readers argue they do not understand Diaz 's use of Spanglish or Spanish in the novel, it is clearly defined within the footnotes of the novel. The need of a non-immigrant reader to look at a footnote to understand and clarify words within a novel does, in fact, place the nonimmigrant in an immigrant 's position for once. Tovar writes, "…however, this is perhaps due to the urgent need to experience what immigrants experience-in turn, the text becomes an agent of bridging understanding about a people group oppressed both by their own culture and the cultural majority of their new land". I believe Diaz is trying to have both Latino Americans and Americans identify with one another and not separate. This is only one of the ways in this novel he shows how the characters are identifying when they are here in America, no matter what generation immigrants or Latino Americans they may …show more content…
In Diaz 's novel, the characters are letting their ancestors doomed past define them and the lives they continue to lead daily. A Fuku is defined as a curse in the novel. Oscar de Leon lets this curse weigh upon him heavily in the novel and with every bad stroke of luck he has he blames it on the curse. When Oscar attempted suicide from the New Brunswick Train Bridge, but only landed in a pile of shrubbery with many bodily injuries he blames the curse for this failure. Diaz writes, "…he said: it was the curse that made me do it, you know." Yunior argues back saying, "I don 't believe in that shit, Oscar. That 's our parents ' shit." Oscar then replies, "it 's ours too". Oscar is really heavyset on the idea that the curse has been in his family since Colon 's arrival from Europe and they will forever be ill-fated due to the curse placed upon his family generations ago. Oscar blames most bad incidents in his life on the fuku. Saldivar agrees when writing in his article, "Such is Yunior 's beginning point of departure from the historical process that comes not only to define Oscar de Leon and his family 's "doomed" and "cursed" diasporic story in the Greater Antilles (including the New Jersey Shores), but also the historically doomed and damned processes of the Martinquean psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon saw as defining the inhabitants of the Greater Antilles as the damnes de la terre (1)". Admiral Colon 's arrival from Europe
In the book he does that because he is trying to bring together two separate worlds and languages and mesh them together, much like what it is for a person immigrating to the United States of America. He reduces strain between the two cultures by creating the use of Spanglish. Though many American readers argue they do not understand Diaz 's use of Spanglish or Spanish in the novel, it is clearly defined within the footnotes of the novel. The need of a non-immigrant reader to look at a footnote to understand and clarify words within a novel does, in fact, place the nonimmigrant in an immigrant 's position for once. Tovar writes, "…however, this is perhaps due to the urgent need to experience what immigrants experience-in turn, the text becomes an agent of bridging understanding about a people group oppressed both by their own culture and the cultural majority of their new land". I believe Diaz is trying to have both Latino Americans and Americans identify with one another and not separate. This is only one of the ways in this novel he shows how the characters are identifying when they are here in America, no matter what generation immigrants or Latino Americans they may …show more content…
In Diaz 's novel, the characters are letting their ancestors doomed past define them and the lives they continue to lead daily. A Fuku is defined as a curse in the novel. Oscar de Leon lets this curse weigh upon him heavily in the novel and with every bad stroke of luck he has he blames it on the curse. When Oscar attempted suicide from the New Brunswick Train Bridge, but only landed in a pile of shrubbery with many bodily injuries he blames the curse for this failure. Diaz writes, "…he said: it was the curse that made me do it, you know." Yunior argues back saying, "I don 't believe in that shit, Oscar. That 's our parents ' shit." Oscar then replies, "it 's ours too". Oscar is really heavyset on the idea that the curse has been in his family since Colon 's arrival from Europe and they will forever be ill-fated due to the curse placed upon his family generations ago. Oscar blames most bad incidents in his life on the fuku. Saldivar agrees when writing in his article, "Such is Yunior 's beginning point of departure from the historical process that comes not only to define Oscar de Leon and his family 's "doomed" and "cursed" diasporic story in the Greater Antilles (including the New Jersey Shores), but also the historically doomed and damned processes of the Martinquean psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon saw as defining the inhabitants of the Greater Antilles as the damnes de la terre (1)". Admiral Colon 's arrival from Europe