The topic I want to connect with the book and also learned in class is race/ethnicity discrimination. Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez is set in the late 1930’s. This was the time period where racism was still very existent. There was segregation going on where colored people could not even go to certain places at certain times or not at all. In the book for example, Naomi one of the main characters who is “Mexican” goes to Turners General Store for some food. This store was particularly for whites to go grocery shopping. There were specific times for her “kind” to grocery shop there. Mr. Turner even comes out to say “So there’s brown ones and black ones, that don’t matter. What matters is that they don’t sully up my store.” (Perez 45) There was another part in the book where Henry, the father of all the kids, asked his twins what they wanted to go out and do today and they said
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The teacher doesn’t expect me to get it anyway....Teachers usually think Mexicans are too slow to bother with.” (Perez 89)
There was also another part where it was Naomi’s first day at school and her new classmates seemed hostile and saying phrases such as when Elliott Grovener whistled at Naomi since she was pretty and Dot miller says “Go on, catch yourself a disease.” There was also the part when a girl named Miranda said “looking for the cigar factory?” as Naomi went to find a seat. (Perez 33) Obviously whites and colored did not get along so well in this era. They thought Mexicans were nasty and unsanitary just because of their race. Another part that exemplifies this same behavior from classmates was when the gang found out that Naomi did not know how to do laundry they said phrases like “a Mexican girl who didn’t know how to do laundry had to be just about the most unsanitary creature on earth.” (Perez 59) Calling Naomi a “creature” just proves that
The teacher doesn’t expect me to get it anyway....Teachers usually think Mexicans are too slow to bother with.” (Perez 89)
There was also another part where it was Naomi’s first day at school and her new classmates seemed hostile and saying phrases such as when Elliott Grovener whistled at Naomi since she was pretty and Dot miller says “Go on, catch yourself a disease.” There was also the part when a girl named Miranda said “looking for the cigar factory?” as Naomi went to find a seat. (Perez 33) Obviously whites and colored did not get along so well in this era. They thought Mexicans were nasty and unsanitary just because of their race. Another part that exemplifies this same behavior from classmates was when the gang found out that Naomi did not know how to do laundry they said phrases like “a Mexican girl who didn’t know how to do laundry had to be just about the most unsanitary creature on earth.” (Perez 59) Calling Naomi a “creature” just proves that