In the narrative essay, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” journalist Jose Antonio Vargas recounts his childhood journey from the Philippines to the United States. He presents his accomplishments in his education and career as a journalist while living with his grandparents and having an illegal status in the United States. Throughout Vargas’ story, he explains the difficulties that he faced for not having the proper credentials to be in the United States. Building up his essay as a personal narrative, Vargas build the idea that just as any other immigrant he has to make tough decisions in order to survive. While on the process of constructing this idea he adopts a sympathetically tone to the readers.…
Although I did not necessarily agree with most of the group opinions I still value the group’s responses to the literature. I thought that their personal responses about the short story made me questions my own interpretations. I found this story to be very relatable to my upbringing and childhood. My mother who primarily raised me, was born and raised in Mexico and migrated here when she was 18. Although she was in her 40’s during my childhood she still carried many Mexican beliefs with her that she daily expressed with me throughout my upbringing and even today.…
The authors of the four memoirs overcame their childhood obstacles by bonding with their families. Gary Soto’s family helped him accept working in the fields. Laurence Yep’s father helped him realize that he was loved all along. Barack Obama’s doesn’t fit in but his father helps him through it. Julia Alvarez is leaving a dangerous country and her family helps her through.…
As people look at others around them and guess what cultural background they come from without knowing, in most cases, they are either slightly off or on the opposite end of the spectrum. Most everyone has been guilty by their assumptions of race or ethnicity at some point. When interviewing John Killingbeck, a twenty-year-old student at SIUe, I learned that he has background that surprised and interested me immediately. I recently met John and was aware that he was Latino, but I did not know enough of his unique cultural background. He was born and raised a United States citizen.…
In “And May He be Bilingual,” an essay included in her book “Women in the Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer,” Judith Ortiz Cofer depicts that hardships that she faced as a child of immigrant parents. Like many other people that share similar issues, the essay responds to the alienation that immigrants and people of a Latino background experience in the United States (Cofer 2). This consciousness happens to be supported by the several factors, the United States has always depicted itself as a country that allows others to manifest and achieve their dreams, and although the United States may seem to have already adapted and encouraged immigrant integration, it actually lacks on more than meets the eye. Cofer has decided to include various…
Today are more than eleven million of immigrants that live undocumented in the United States. In fact, all those immigrants have to deal every day with an insecure situation that affects their whole lives. The author of Undocumented Dan-el Padilla Peralta described with interesting details his undocumented life. He came from the Dominican Republic to live in the USA with his family. Dan-el faced with a different reality from his family life in the original country.…
In Ray Suarez’s book entitled Latino Americans he shares the rich history of Latinos who helped to shape the United States. Latino Americans share the personal success and struggles of what it means to be an immigrant and the obstacles they have faced. The book offers a rich history of immigration and certainly reflects present day events of the United States. It tells the story of how people from different regions and continents across the globe came to be one.…
Rodriguez properly targets his audience through the use of constant examples of people not being able to understand their heritage blending with their American culture. Within the essay Rodriguez explains that a boy named Michael was taught speak up and to stand straight. When that child went home and talked with his Chinese father, he was ridiculed because of his American ways. The targeted audience is towards those who do not understand how life in America is shaped by culture, as well as those who want a deeper explanation about American culture. The essay is written from the point of view of a Mexican American author, Richard Rodriguez.…
Ricardo describes his childhood as a child of Mexican immigrant parents studying in an English school in America, where he had problems in communicating at school because he did not know the “public language”, English. At first, he was shy and timid at school because he was feeling uncomfortable with English, but with his parents’ and teacher’s help he “raised his hand to volunteer an answer”, from that day he “moved very far from the disadvantaged child”(288). He then started feeling as an American citizen. Although Rodriguez admits that he lost the strong intimacy at home with his parents, he emphasizes that the “loss implies the gain”(291).…
How-ever, the rest of working class thinks white people will never accept them. Soto’s family is like this status, hardworking, be a good housewife and sent their children to better schools. It is their whole life, there are no extravagant hopes to approaching middle class, do not want to make friends with them. They put their energy in children. Children get a better life is their only hopes.…
A Journey of Self-Discovery: Who am I? Postwar America, in the 1960’s leaves thousands of immigrants creating their own families in the United States. It leaves first-generation Americans with the question, what am I? Am I American?…
My hearts beat louder and faster the further away we got from Santa Maria. Silence was the only noise that came. Besides the van's engine and graveling ground. In the mirror, I saw Roberto. A blank expression.…
Reading Alvarez article gave me an insight to someone else’s struggle I personally have never had to deal with. My family is different from Alvarez’s family in many ways but similar in a few when I think about it. The biggest difference is my family doesn’t really claim any religion or cultural background, we think of ourselves as simply Americas, if we even really think about it at all. Maybe, this shows the amount of assimilation my family has done, in this sense I can see how we have lost everything. We no longer know where we come from or the beliefs that were once so dear to our ancestors.…
In this memoir, the characters are of Mexican heritage, which affects what their actions are. The main character did not want to embrace his Mexican culture, so he did not pick grapes. On the contrary, the average Hillsborough teen is surrounded by many different cultures and races, which makes them more inclined to the notion that everyone is equal, and that no race is better than another. The author states, “Grandpa had worked in the fields, as did the children” (840, L. 15). This proves that, in those times, if you in the midst of poverty, you would work in the farms, especially if your parents and their relatives had done so long before.…
1. Cristian Bonilla from Honduras, immigrated at the age of 12: “Being an immigrant wherever I am, and therefore your experience will change, because your past experiences were so much different than anybody else’ here. If you were born outside the country your culture values, your family values everything else changes. And then once you are here, you have come face-to-face to the new culture that is in the United States, the American way… You are always in that constant battle of being like, who I am?…