Stereotypes In Judith Ortiz Cofer's I Want A Wife

"Stereotype, whether positive or negative, are harmful"

In today's world, many people has different stereotype about somebody. There are positive and negative, but both of them are harmful to people. People always stereotype about other people who they don't fully know them. In Archbishop Riordan High School, most of the students think Chinese students are very good at math. In fact, some of the Chinese students are very bad at math. This maybe harmful to those Chinese students who did badly at math, because it makes them think they are different to a normal Chinese student. It shows not only negative stereotype will be harmful to people but also positive stereotype will cause harmful to people. Some writer make positive and negative on their essay. In "I Want a Wife", Judy Brady is a female who stands on a male view about getting a wife. She discuss about what kinds of wife a male would want to get. She mentions "I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs", "I want a wife who will take care of the details of my social life", and "I want a wife who is sensitive to my sexual needs". (P.37) She thinks male usually make both positive and negative stereotype about female.
Judith Ortiz Cofer writes an essay called "The Myth of the Latin woman" which is about cultural stereotype. This essay is about a Latin girl facing different culture people. She remembers what happens to her at her first dance. "I remember the boy who took me to my first formal dance leaning over to plant a sloppy, over-eager kiss painfully on my mouth; when I didn't respond with sufficient passion, he remarked resentfully: "I thought you Latin girls were supposed to mature early,"" (P.106) The boy mentions about Latin girls were suppose to mature early, which shows this boy is making a positive cultural stereotyping about the writer. In fact, the writer didn't grow into womanhood yet and this might cause harm to the writer's