It is common practice to define a period in history by the experiences of the people living during that time. However, this presents an issue when those few experiences are generalized and expanded to represent an entire population during a given time period. When considering the two texts Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties by Sara Davidson and Migrant Daughter: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman by Frances Esquibel Tywoniak and Mario T. García, this point is particularly pertinent. Although Fran from Migrant Daughter: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman and Susie from Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties were both attending school at University of California …show more content…
For Fran, a large part of liberation is getting out of the barrio and its inherent restraints. When Fran is at a local grocer and witnesses an incident that troubles her greatly, she realizes that staying in the barrio is not conducive to her success. In the text, Fran states that there were “no opportunities for Mexicans like myself who believed that our futures held more than working in the fields, being a clerk, or marrying and having lots of children” (Tywoniak and García 96). For Fran, liberation exists beyond the confines of the …show more content…
If one were to pick up Migrant Daughter: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman and not read anything else from the period, they may think that the story of Fran is an accurate account of the entirety of the people going to University of California Berkeley at the time. However, if one were to solely read Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties, they would have a much different interpretation of what life is like as a woman in Berkeley in the 1960s. Regardless of the differences in experiences, both Fran and Susie seek liberation. Where Fran seeks liberation from life in the barrio, Susie seeks liberation from societal norms. Through an analysis of the ways in which each woman defines liberation, the approaches through which each woman attempts to achieve liberation, and the results of those attempts, there are clear differences in the two journeys Fran and Susie. However, just because those experiences and processes are different, it does not necessarily mean that one liberation process is better than the other, just that they are different. The notion that Fran and Susie went through a similar process of liberation is