What defines an American? Is it what a person looks like? Is it where a person comes from? These are the questions that Dwight Okita and Sandra Cisneros try to answer in their writings. Okita's, "Response to Executive Order 9066," is about how some Japanese Americans reacted to the executive order that made it legal to put Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II. Cisneros's, "Mericans," is about how a little girl has to deal with many people judging her and a grandma who hates the country they live in. Both texts convey the statement that is, you do not have to come from a certain place or look a certain way in order to be an American.
In "Mericans," Cisneros uses the point of view of a little girl whose family is from Mexico. The little girl and her family are proud to be Americans, but they have a grandmother who thinks that America is the most barbaric place on earth. Besides that, they also have to deal with people treating them differently because they do not look like the same as them. They played the same games, liked the same food, and liked America just as much as the other kids did. The other kids did not understand that they had more in common with American kids than they did with Mexican kids. …show more content…
This text showed that even though her origins were from Japan, she still liked some of the same stuff Americans liked. She talks about how she likes hot dogs and sometimes does not like to eat with chopsticks. She even had an American friend she would play with at school. This all changes when they started taken her family into the internment
In "Mericans," Cisneros uses the point of view of a little girl whose family is from Mexico. The little girl and her family are proud to be Americans, but they have a grandmother who thinks that America is the most barbaric place on earth. Besides that, they also have to deal with people treating them differently because they do not look like the same as them. They played the same games, liked the same food, and liked America just as much as the other kids did. The other kids did not understand that they had more in common with American kids than they did with Mexican kids. …show more content…
This text showed that even though her origins were from Japan, she still liked some of the same stuff Americans liked. She talks about how she likes hot dogs and sometimes does not like to eat with chopsticks. She even had an American friend she would play with at school. This all changes when they started taken her family into the internment