In this paper, I will be summarizing the following chapters: Chapter 3: "A Legacy of Hate: The Conquest of Mexico’s Northwest”; Chapter 4: “Remember the Alamo: The Colonization of Texas”; and Chapter 5: “Freedom in a Cage: The Colonization of New Mexico. All three chapters are from the book, “Occupied America, A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo F. Acuna. In chapter three, Acuna explains the causes of the war between Mexico and North America. In chapter four, Acuna explains the colonization of Texas and how Mexicans migrated from Mexico to Texas. In chapter five, Acuna explains the colonization of New Mexico and the economic changes that the people had to go through.…
In “Legal Alien”, Pat Mora discusses further the borders that are allowed, making people from a Mexican-American background partially accepted and partially shut out. Instead of placing two people in contrast and similarity, Mora places the speaker as a partially undefined person against the two majority cultures s/he faces. We do not know if the speaker is a man or a woman, young or old. We do know that s/he can speak English and Spanish, and feels caught in between two cultures by the perceptions of others. The primary focus of the language of the poem is in the hyphenation of the speaker.…
The two Mexican American characteristics that I saw in the Zoot Suite movie are, “Showing an Oppositional way of thinking, and “Rewrite the Mexican American and Mexican experience back into history”. The movie Zoot Suite was about a play that relived the trial of Henry Reyna, which is based off the real trial of Henry Leyvas. They showed how Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were being treated and how they were wrongly judged due to the way they looked. The “zoot suites” was the style of young Chicanos back in the day, and the police associated crime and violence with their look. The movie clearly expressed the inequality they faced during the jury trial. These are all examples of how the movie used Oppositional way of thinking/ questioning…
Rodolfo Corky Gonzales was the extraordinary author that wrote the famous poem of “I am Joaquin/ Yo Soy Joaquin”. He was a professional boxer, poet, activist and was the founder of the Crusade for Justice which was an important movement for justice and equality in the Mexican American Community in the 1960’s. For years Rodolfo fought and led protest for chicano unity and was an advocate for racism in the states and also police brutality. However, the thing that impacted the Mexican American community the most is his “I am Joaquin” poem because it brought light into a community that till this point wasn’t recognized for being chicano. Several poems revolving around the hardships of Mexican Americans in the United States had been made prior…
Not many people can recreate what life was like in a Spanish speaking, neighborhood, barrio, like Gary Soto. Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California to working-class Mexican-American parents in 1952. Soto’s father died when he was 5 years old from a work accident. Soto used this tragedy to help him write later on in life. He grew up working in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley and in factories, so a lot of his poetry is based on everyday experiences for Mexican-Americans like racism, identity and poverty. Soto’s poetry has a narrative quality and usually feels like a story. Many of Soto’s poems are a recreation of his own past that can transcend down to any generation. One characteristic of Soto’s poem’s is the use of Chicano words which…
Richard Blanco is the son of two immigrants from Cuba: he grew up in a Cuban cohort in Miami, Florida. It was instilled in him at a young age that his ancestry and America were one in the same. They were both magical. His foreign home was talked about often, never condemned, while America was their physical home and their place to earn a better life than their previous one could afford them. Blanco’s poem, “One Today,” exhibits his cultural pride, optimism, and gratitude for life and his country: The United States.…
Francisco X Alarcon word choice, word order, line breaks, and use of stanzas set the tone for the poem “Mexican is Not a Noun”. During the time that the poem was written there was an uprising against immigration laws. The word choice, word order, line breaks, and the use of stanzas in Alarcon’s poem leads me to believe that Alarcon was a part of the stance against the governments treatment of Hispanic’s and the harsh immigration laws. The tone of Alarcon’s poem is corrective, condemning, bitter, painful and sad. The short stanzas along with the choice of words used to describe what Alarcon feels about the word Mexican are written to evoke emotion within the reader. Alarcon uses the word “it” repeatedly to describe how being oppressed makes…
After Marina was violated by Cortes, she gave birth to the first son who was born of both indigenous and European decent. This gave Marina the title of La Malinche or the violated mother, who now symbolizes how the indigenous race was violated by the Europeans. Indigenous males like Paz, are denied the freedoms of their male European peer’s due to the “worthless” label that was bestowed onto his race by La Malinche. Paz believes that the only way to leave these historical labels is for Mexicans in power to reshape their community’s views regarding the privileges that are given to European men, and the privileges that are taken…
The undocumented immigrants serve the country and American society in time they were needed. most of them have involved building this country side by side the American citizen. there are millions of undocumented immigrants of the whole population living, working, attending school, and paying taxes for years. Most of the undocumented immigrants, after living for years in American society, lost their ability to return to their countries for many reasons, and gradually assimilated into US society especially the new generation. The new generation of Immigrants “Who attended studies at university or college are able to find better jobs and they will build the economy in their new homeland” (Urrutia). Not all undocumented immigrants are illegal…
The poem “Legal Alien” is about a woman of Mexican parents, who is born and raised in America. An American citizen established by law, but at the same time this person feels like an illegal alien because of how some people treat her. She is fluent in both, English and in Spanish. Feels American because she is, but at the same time she doesn’t. She is looked at by Americans (Anglos) as inferior, and looked at by Mexicans like she doesn’t belong. They make her feel like she is not one of them, like she doesn’t fit anywhere. “An American to Mexicans a Mexican to Americans a handy token sliding back and forth between the fringes of both worlds” (14-18).– What this means is that she feels like she could be from both places and at the same time from neither, but on the border of each. Happy, sad, confused, lost but at the same time she tries to cover all her feelings and what she is thinking “by masking the discomfort” (20) is that she has to grin and bear the fact that she is being condemned for having two nationalities.…
In The Tortilla Curtain T. Coraghessan Boyle tackles an issue which haunts much of the Western world: illegal immigration. Alternating between two couples, one white American, the other Mexican, the novel explores both sides of this difficult question, confronting racism, fear and the moral dilemma of the liberal conscience.…
It truly is written in a new rich, poetic vocabulary, and it explores the themes and concepts that Paz conveys in his beautifully constructed wording. In The Labyrinth regarding Solitude, Paz examines Mexican identity, what it indicates to be Mexican, the history of Mexico and importance in shaping the Mexican identity, and finally the solitude that's the condition not just of Mexicans but of most human beings. The book comprises nine essays, each of and this can be read as a completely independent work. The first four essays deal with who the Mexicans are generally, their identity, and the way they acquired it; these kind of essays reflect the influence of existentialism on…
Rosa PantojaPeriod 110/9/12Ms. HamptonAmerican literatureLegal Alien EssayThe beliefs of the contemporary time period is that the voices of all cultures, ethnicgroups, gender, and nationalities should be heard and poetry is universal and speaks to allpeople regardless of their background. In the poem Legal Alien by Pat Mora, the literary devicesthat Pat Mora uses are metaphor and personification. These literary devices help reveal the…
For many years now people have judged one another based on characteristics and family background. Some judge based on skin color, race, where your family has come from, and how you came about. “Legal Alien/ Extranjera Legal” by Pat Mora gives a very realistic message of how it can feel to be a mexican american and to be seen as a ‘legal alien’. To feel not wanted by either side, and to be judged based on the origins of your ancestors and your race. “viewed by Anglos as perhaps exotic,/ perhaps inferior, definitely different,/ viewed by mexicans as alien.” This here, is a perfect example of the way Mora feels about being judged and seen as an alien and her interesting use of diction, metaphors and similes. I think the tone Mora has is one of somebody who feels like an outsider, due to being judge by the people who surround her daily.…
“In effect, I shall state the reason why we are gathered. In the history of nations there are names that by themselves signify an achievement, that bring to mind affections and greatness. Names which, like magic formulas, evoke pleasant and smiling ideas; names which become something like a pact, a symbol of peace, a bond of love between nations. The names of Luna and Hidalgo belong among them...-their glories illuminate two ends of the globe: The East and the West, Espanya and Filipinas. Upon pronouncing them, gentlemen, I envision two brilliant arches, each rising from the two regions, that entwine above in the heights, impelled by the sympathy of common origin, and from that height they bind two peoples with eternal ties, two people separated in vain by the seas and space, two peoples in which the seeds of disunion do not germinate, BLINDLY SOWN BY MEN AND THEIR TYRANNY. Luna and Hidalgo are as much Spanish glories as they are Filipino. Just as they were born in the Philippines, they could have been born in Spain, because genius has no country, genius blossoms everywhere, genius is like the light, the air, it is the heritage of all- cosmopolitan 2 like space,…