Theme Of Diversity In America

America is a place of diversity also known as a “melting pot.” There are many different cultures and people that live in this society. America’s diversity comes from a long history of migration. With many cultures migrating each culture went through a particular struggle to thrive in America. It is also accurate to say that all cultures that migrated went through the same struggle such as discrimination and prejudice. Puerto Ricans are U.S citizens that are allowed to travel freely to and from the mainland; however when thousands of Puerto Ricans immigrated to the United States they too had a similar struggle and had experienced adjustment issues. An issue present for Puerto Ricans in the United States is the issue of their Identity. In most
When Negi was living in Macun, a small village located in the countryside of Puerto Rico, she was very aware of herself and her environment. She began to identify herself as a Jíbaro, a country person, but was conflicted because of her mother’s views. She mentions that she wants “to be a Jíbara more than anything in the world, but Mami said I couldn’t because I was born in the city, where Jíbaros were mocked for their unsophisticated customs and peculiar dialect” (12). Negi didn’t understand why she was not a Jíbara if her family lived like them, if her grandparent were jíbara, but most importantly if she felt like a Jíbara. Here readers see that Negi uses her environment as a reference to what is a Jíbara and is able to identify as one. She makes it known that she was confused about people being looked down on. Negi later in Santurce, an urban community, understands what her mother meant about being a Jíbara. She is ridiculed at school and explains that, “in Santurce I had become what I wasn’t in Macun. In Santurce a Jíbara was something no one wants to be,” (39). When Negi was living in Macun she first began to identify herself as a Jíbara, but after Santurce she had a new understanding that changed her identity. Although she feels like a Jíbara, the encounters with identifying as one in Macun and in Santurce has a huge influence on her and begins to change her identity as a Puerto
On the flight to New York Negi writes that “the person she was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created. The Puerto Rican Jíbara who longed for the green quiet of a tropical afternoon was to become a hybrid who would never forgive the uprooting” (209). Santiago isn’t happy about leaving her home but she understands that there will be a change in her identity, she can no longer be a Jíbara, but instead has to assimilate. When Negi arrives in New York she is exposed to a different environment. New York isn’t like Puerto Rico where there is only Puerto Ricans and Americans, but has an assortment of cultures. She identifies herself in this community as Puerto Rican but is exposed for the first time to two different types of Puerto Ricans. There are the Puerto Ricans who come from Puerto Rico, and the Brooklyn Puerto Ricans whose parents and grandparents come from Puerto Rico, but have never seen Puerto Rico. To this group Puerto Rico is a place for vacation but not to live, because of its primitive nature. Negi sees this and doesn’t understand how there can be two different groups of Puerto Ricans, “the ones who longed for the island and the one who wanted to forget it as soon as possible” (220). Negi never stopped thinking of home, but she was conflicted about her experience in Brooklyn. There were times in the memoir when she wanted to go back to Puerto Rico