Analyzing Judith Ortiz Cofer's 'The Myth Of The Latin Women'

The Perspective of Cultural Differences
“The Myth of the Latin Women” by Judith Ortiz Cofer, the author states how she has been treated by different people in different countries due to their conception of her as a Latin woman. She points out several incidents where she is viewed, stereotypically, as a woman only capable of being a housewife and as a sexual object. She also shows the cross-cultural conflict Hispanics have to deal with on an everyday basis. This country, the United States is purely dominated by Caucasians, where cultural traditions are seeing in Latin women, mistakenly, something purely sexual. She points out these differences to readers to understand why there should not be racial stereotype and gender in the society. In Cofer’s essay, she talks about the controversial stereotypes that many Latin American women experienced and are still experiencing. In the
The author understands her audience is multi-cultural, therefore has different boundaries she must “tip toe” around. By giving some example of the words casas [households], bodega [grocery]. She repeats one word throughout the article which is “Latin “and “Latina”. She is proving a point, and reminds her audience that she is only talking about the stereotypes of Latinas and no one else. Therefore, she relies heavily on a very simplistic informative tone that expresses her experience clearly, but not in a strictly one culture view. By choosing the Spanish words to help identify the culture that she is describing she ties in people outside of that culture as well and does not use too complicated grammar for non-Spanish speakers. She wants to get her point across to the reader to not think of any other stereotypes that might be prevalent in their cultures due to her inexperience in those