Spanish missions in California

Author Ingrid Rojas Contreas was born and grew up in Bogota, Colombia, and has since moved to San Francisco, California. She finds that Spanish is the language that is inside her mind, while English is the language that is alive and available at her fingertips. Her short stories and essays have appeared in quite a few publications, like Electric Literature, Huffington Post, and Guernica, as well as others. For her non-fiction work, she has gotten the Mary Tanenbaum, and the Missouri Review's…

one house in north hills where my parents lived and one house in mission hills where my grandparents lived. i lived with my grandparents for my whole life and there i was taught the basic skills of life which were how to crawl,walk,run, talk, read, and write. when learning to write/ scribble i would draw on the walls and…

The novel The Tortilla Curtain, written by author T. C. Boyle, gives us a telescope view into two different worlds of culture, highlighting the differences between the upper-middle and lower class in southern California. The book breaks into three different sections that contain eight chapters that deals with numerous parallels that connect the lifestyles of the characters, but also contrast them. The author tends to switch back and forth between each chapter in order for us to understand the…

Over 150 years ago, our nation went through a major battle known as the Civil War. It was a conflict where 620,000 American soldiers died because of the different viewpoints between the North and the South. The years following this great battle molded our nation to become the land of the free and the home of the brave. The next 50 years for the United States of America were marked by the quest for freedom of different sorts, expansion as a nation, and modernization. It began with the hard-fought…

She explains how the Europeans tore down the infrastructure American Indians had built: their religion, culture, language, material items, and replaced them with Christian ideals with the mission efforts to “civilize” a group of people who were arguably more civilized than the Europeans who stole their land and annihilated almost all indigenous peoples. Those negative changes combined with her loss of identity and language through missionization…

Agency Setting The agency of focus is Mark Twain Elementary. Mark Twain Elementary is located in Lawndale, California. Mark Twain is one of six elementary schools within the Lawndale Elementary School District servicing the Lawndale community and neighboring communities. Mark Twain services both children and families whose children attend the school. The mission of Mark Twain Elementary is to ensure that all children who are enrolled at the school attain a strong academic education, become…

The Crusades: A Catalyst for Exploration “God, glory, and gold--not necessarily in that order--took post-Renaissance Europeans to parts of the globe they had never before seen.”, states Larry Schweikart and Michael Patrick Allen at the beginning of their book, A Patriot’s History of the United States (Schweikart). Discoveries stemming from the Crusades’ driven hunger for gold and righteousness are explored in this paper along with contemporary examples of discoveries made to meet wartime needs.…

however, their innocent, yet blank stares seemed to burn through my skin. It was the fall of 2006 and I was standing in Mr.Figueroa 's second-grade classroom appearing like a lost puppy. Fortunately, Mr. Figueroa, a tall man, with sympathetic eyes was Spanish fluent, therefore, I was at least able to introduce myself. However, he made the innocent mistake of asking me to introduce myself to the class as well. "Helloooo", my mind rehearsed, I couldn 't find the right sounds and I began to feel…

stories, one is the views of middle class characters and the other from the immigrant’s perspective. It explores their relationship with issues such as poverty, immigration and of course the American dream. This book was published in 1995, right after California voted against Proposition 187 which would have provided many useful public services/resources to illegal immigrants. The author unfortunately does not provide his personal opposition to either side in this story. The first part of the…

from the University of Chicago and obtained his Master’s at UCLA. Both authors live in Los Angeles, California. ("Opium Wars") The main focus of this book is what happened in the Opium Wars that occurred between Britain and China in 1839-1842 and once again in 1856-1860. During the 19th century, Great Britain was heavily reliant on China for tea. The Chinese government would only accept Spanish silver dollars as payment for the tea they produced and sold. Britain was…