ipl-logo

American History Judith Ortiz Cofer Summary

718 Words3 Pages

“American History” is a short story written by Judith Ortiz Cofer in 1993. She was born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, in 1952 but then moved to United States when she was three years old. Her story narrates the experience of a fourteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl named Elena that lived with her family in New Jersey in the early 1960s, when racism and segregation were strongly present in America. This story’s main theme is ethnic racism since some of the characters demonstrate racist thoughts, dialogues and actions against Latin people, in this case towards Elena and her family. The author’s main purpose of writing this story was to criticize the xenophobic behaviours against Latin immigrants and to show how these innocent people can get affected …show more content…

Kennedy was murdered. She went really excited to Eugene’s home and when she knocked the door, a red headed tall woman opened the door and asked her what she wanted in an unfriendly voice… that woman was Eugene’s mother. The lady then pointed to Elena’s apartment building, “El Building”, and asked her if that was where she lived. After Elena acknowledged that she lived there, the mother said to herself: "I don’t know how you people do it." With this phrase she was classifying Elena and everyone that lived in that building as a type of people just because of their race. The mother then said openly to her that Eugene didn’t want to study with her and that it wasn’t anything personal. “He cannot study with you. It’s nothing personal. You understand? We won’t be in this place much longer, no need for him to get close to people—it’ll just make it harder for him later.” After this, Skinny Bones left and went to her house, devastated. She couldn’t believe that something as shallow as her appearance of her heritage could stand in the way between her best friend, her soul mate, and her. This is how the story ends, showing a cruel yet common reality among immigrants in the United

Show More
Related
1348 Words | 6 Pages

In Caballero, Gonzalez & Raleigh belittle the image and abilities of the non-white Mexican worker (peon). By using the narrator to reinforce the negative stereotypes regarding

Read More
378 Words | 2 Pages

In the article, “Breeds of America: Coming of Age, Coming of Race,” which was first published in the Harper’s magazine, William Melvin Kelley recalls his “confusing” childhood of being a colored citizen in the United States. He begins his memoir by portraying a simple skin comparison with his friends. An Italy kid was blushed because he had a same brown skin color as Kelly does under the sun. Kelly raised a question about that blush: why would brown skin make the Italy kid embarrassing? Then Kelly introduces the unfair collision of race and culture.

Read More
1167 Words | 5 Pages

The chapters of our textbook, America: A Narrative History, written by George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, takes us on a historical yet comparative journey of the road to war and what caused the American Revolution, an insight into the war itself, and a perception to what life was like in America after the war was over. The essays of the book, America Compared: American History in International Perspective, collected by Carl J. Guarneri gives us a global context and a comparison between the North and South Americas in the dividing issues of labor, slavery, taxes, politics, economy, liberty, and equality. Part One These chapters in our textbook Tindall describes; the road to the American Revolution, the road to the surrendering of the British, and the road to the American colonists receiving their independence and developing the government which the people of the United States will be governed by. The road to the American Revolution consisted of several events, which escalated to the war that began April 19, 1775, as the tensions between the American colonies and the British Government advanced towards breaking point.

Read More
143 Words | 1 Pages

“Never Marry a Mexican” is both the title of Sandra Cisneros’ short story published in the collection Woman Hollering Creek, and one of the most ironic as well as provocative statements present in the Chicana literature. The story itself is a critical as well as self-reflexive exercise in understanding concepts such as gender, race and ethnicity. Working with the presumption that the affiliation to distinct gender as well as racial and ethnic background is determined by the certain level of performativity, Cisneros illustrates difficulties in performing a double role , frequently faced by the second and the third generation of Mexican immigrants in the United States. Following paragraphs will consider Cisneros’ story with Judith Butler’s concept

Read More
1731 Words | 7 Pages

Cohen’s fourth thesis talks about the differences among groups of people in areas of race, gender, etc. and how those differences can create monsters in society. Unauthorized immigrants often get placed into a “different” or “unwanted” group and that causes them to face unfairness in society. “How Immigrants Become ‘Other’” correlates to Cohen’s thesis because unauthorized immigrants can be made into monsters due to differences in race and legal status. The group of unauthorized immigrants can become alienated in society, and the people themselves are sometimes referred to as “illegal aliens.”

Read More
1103 Words | 5 Pages

Selena Quintanilla’s father once said, “We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans.” In today’s society, many have encountered the challenge of not being able to be who they really are because they fear not being accepted by others, more specifically their culture. But, what happens when an individual is part of two worlds that have just as many rules? Gloria E. Anzaldúa was a Mexican-American writer and poet who made a major contribution to the fields of cultural, feminist, and queer theory. Anzaldúa identifies as a Chicana and speaks different variations of Spanish, some of which she exhibits in her works.

Read More
384 Words | 2 Pages

In the article, Two Sisters, Two Americas, the author, Brooke Ross, informs readers of the Saravia family’s story and the effects of being a “mixed-status family” with worries of being deported. A mixed-status family is a family with a combination of illegal immigrants, and citizens living in the United States. A path to legalization should be created for people who are already here illegally, but border security should be tightened to prevent more people entering the US illegally. These immigrants do jobs that most Americans don’t want. For example, “such immigrants do jobs that few Americans want, like working on farms and cleaning homes” (Ross, 10).

Read More
969 Words | 4 Pages

Cofer begins her essay by reliving an interaction she had with an Irishman on a trip to London, where the man re-enacted “María” from West Side Story. It was Cofer’s Hispanic appearance which led to the incident and the extra attention caused her to feel like an “island”. She felt out of place and insists that the same situation would not have likely occurred

Read More
910 Words | 4 Pages

Growing up as a young female teen came be hard due to the stress and peer pressure of appearance. For teenage girls from immigrant families, it came be very challenging to fit in with the “American way”. Esperanza struggles throughout the book with finding her place in society. She looks to other female role models in her community for guidance, where she finds different results. Most of Esperanza’s female role models on Mango Street have unique stories to tell of their experiences with men on Mango Street.

Read More
454 Words | 2 Pages

“It's that it hurts” by Tomas Rivera is a touching personal narrative that focuses on the harsh reality of growing up mexican in America. The narrator gives you bits and pieces of what happened that day at school and allows you as the reader to braid together different strands of his narrative and interpret it the way you see it. He talks about being unfairly bullied by two white boys for being mexican and sent home by the principal who makes it clear that he couldn’t care less about expelling Tomas from school, stating over the phone, “I guess I’ll just throw him out”(140). On the way home Tomas was contemplating whether or not he got expelled from school and thinking of the consequences that would soon follow if he was. It hurt him that people were so racially discriminatory against him and that he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

Read More
1301 Words | 6 Pages

Black and Puerto Rican: Developing Piri’s Double-Sided Identity For centuries, American citizens have possessed a tendency to view ethnicity in black and white. A person without pale skin and smooth hair is characterized as black without regard to his or her self-identification. Given the racism prevalent in society, this black-white paradigm causes difficulty for people who are not comfortable in one or either category. Piri Thomas was one of these children, and his memoir recounts his struggle to understand himself. In Down These Mean Streets, Thomas demonstrates how the protagonist Piri’s confusion with his skin color and Puerto Rican heritage lead him to eventually acknowledge and appreciate his identity as an Afro-Latino man in America.

Read More
923 Words | 4 Pages

Generalizations take after specific individuals for the duration of their lives. Judith Ortiz Cofer is a Latina who has been stereotyped and she delineates this in her article, "The myth of the Latin lady: I just met a young lady named Maria. " Cofer depicts how pernicious generalizations can really be. Perusers can understand Cofer 's message through the numerous explanatory interests she employments.

Read More
722 Words | 3 Pages

The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María is an essay by Judith Ortiz Cofer that addresses the impact of stereotyping on Latino women. Throughout the essay, Cofer relates her personal experiences with stereotypes to discuss how they have negatively affected her life and the lives of other Latinas. She also explains how these stereotypes originated and calls on her audience, the majority-white non-Latino population, to stop propagating the stereotypical portrayals of Latino women. In The Myth of the Latin Woman, Cofer speaks out about how stereotyping hinders the process of assimilating to a new culture by appealing to ethos through her personal experiences, using similes that show how stereotypes create isolation, and adopting

Read More
965 Words | 4 Pages

The Rhetorical Analysis of “The Myth of the Latin Woman” There are many examples of incidents happened because of cultural differences. Some of them are short, single events, while other follow a person or social group for decades. Professor Judith Cortiz Cofer describes the second example in her essay The Myth of the Latin Woman that was originally published in Glamour in 1992. The author focused on the stereotypical view of Latin women from the perspective of the personal experience as a Puerto Rican girl and woman in the USA. Cofer based her essay on examples from her own life and observations of the problem in a broader sense.

Read More
618 Words | 3 Pages

Have you ever thought about the phrase “American History” and wondered the real stories that occurred in an individual from the past? Several other citizens of America have, too. The simple answer to the meaning of the title “American History” written by Judith Ortiz Cofer purports that said story illustrates the history of an American citizen and revolves around a significant event from the past. However, the overall message become larger than the straightforward idea. While educating readers on the time placed during President Kennedy's death in 1963, the author illustrates the struggling truth behind the story of an average young individual American immigrant girl in a plethora of ways.

Read More

More about American History Judith Ortiz Cofer Summary

Related Topics

Open Document