In the poem “Green Chili” by Jimmy Santiago Baca the author shows us how he uses culture, identity and family to describe the poems importance to him. The way Baca uses culture is by stating that New Mexico is full of green and red chili. He also uses culture by naming all of the foods that are most commonly eaten in New Mexico. How Baca uses identity to describe the poems importance is by describing the tanned New Mexicans and his grandmother's appearance over the stove. He als
Julia Alvarez’s poem, “Dusting,” is told from the perspective of a women looking back at herself as a child. In the poem, the speaker is addressing how her mother and her childhood self, differed. The speaker is itching to spread her thoughts through words while her mother does the exact opposite by erasing herself or keeping anonymous. In the literal sense, the main conflict between the speaker and the mother is that the speaker writes anywhere and everywhere she can, while the mother follows behind cleaning off all the marks.
The poem starts off with the author being very gloomy and outcasted. A quote that shows this is “Everyone was rich and white/ My family was poor and Mexican” (Olivarez 18-19). This quote shows the tone of this poem and explains the comparison between him and everyone else. He is hurt and has no one to help him because no one is like him. These feelings of isolation and outcast later help the author to grow into the person he is.
All cultures have historical figures that it’s people look up to. For Hispanic American people the connection to their past is very important so remembering figures such as Ché is a way to keep roots with their culture. The last portion of traditions explored in this narrative is the inclusion of the phrase “para la libertad” which translates to for freedom and/or for liberty (17). Given the nature of this poem, it is interesting to note that the use of “la” denotes that libertad is feminine. The ways in which the poem explores traditions of Hispanic American culture is subtle, but definitely a theme
“Oranges,” “The Seventieth Year,” and “Avocado Lake,” showcase Soto’s ability to move a reader using an emotional story without the use of rhyme or rhythm. Through Soto’s poetry, he indicates the traits that define Mexican-American community
The experiences one has at a young age impacts who that person is and what they value. Gary Soto is no exception to this idea. Soto was born into a family with limited resources; his grandparents immigrated to the United States from Mexico, and experienced many hardships both financial and personal. These financial and personal adversities shape his writing into a platform for educating young readers on the struggles of Latino Americans. Gary Soto’s childhood and the Civil Rights movement for Latino Americans inspired his poetry to touch upon the daily struggles of the average Mexican-American farmer through his use of first person narrative.
Henry Duong Chicano 10a Professor: Robert Chao Romero TA: Roseanna Simons Section 1N Final Essay The Chicano Revolution Chicano social identity, as expressed in “I Am Joaquin,” was path breaking for its time. Written by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales this famous epic poem helped many Mexicans during the tough times of assimilating to American culture during the Chicano movement of the 1960s in the United States. During this time many Mexican American immigrants were faced with unequal rights and injustice. They weren’t allowed equal opportunity as whites.
Essay 3 In her essay, “A Hispanic Garden,” Diaz expresses the inner conflict she faces a foreigner between two lands. As a Cuban immigrant residing in the United States she is obligated to fight a continuous battle with herself and others to preserve her culture within the dominant culture. She explains her feelings when she visits her homeland Cuba.
Julia Alvarez, in her poem “’Poetry Makes Nothing Happen’?”, writes that poems do play a role in people’s lives. She supports her idea by using relateable examples of how poems might change someone’s life. Her first example is simple, poetry can entertain someone on long drives. This does not only aply to long dirves however, Alvarez uses this to show that poetry does not have to have a big influence on someone’s life, instead it can affect a person in the smallest of ways, such as entertainment. The second example describes poetry comforting someone after the loss of a loved one.
To many people “I am Joaquin” is more than just an epic poem, it is the anthem of the Chicano movement which embodies our peoples struggles and culture. What made the work become the Chicano Movements anthem is the fact that it is a piece that seems to evaluate the Chicanos and their history from the good to the bad. It also seems to emphasize the Chicanos search and struggle for identity starting from the beginning of the Spanish conquest to our modern times. Basically this poem has become such an iconic work because it attempts and succeeds in encompassing as much Chicano history into it and makes no bias choice as it has both positive historical moments and negative, but they all tie back to Chicanos and their history. One of the main aspect that makes “I am Joaquin” an interesting piece of work and an icon for the Chicano movement is how the work seems to
Anzaldúa was a Mexican American who was a well-known writer and had a major impact on the fields of queer, feminist, and cultural theory. Her most famous work is Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza which includes poems, essays, and short stories. Anzaldúa was no stranger to the use of literary theories in her writing, which is evident in her short story “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Here, the author uses a combination of feminist, reader-response, and psychoanalytic theory to show the struggle of being oneself when they’re Mexican-American. Through the use of feminist theory, she explains how a female is labeled as an “habladora” when she tries to voice out her opinion about something; reader-response theory provides the reader with an understanding of the struggles of self-identity, which they are able to relate to, especially Mexican-Americans; and lastly, psychoanalytic theory illuminates on her childhood experiences, which could explain why Anzaldúa believes in what she does, such as the idea that Anglo people have tried to tame her tongue—in other words, her language.
Lalo Guerrero was one of the first pioneers in the Chicano music industry. Guerrero offered the barrios a voice by incorporating their vitality, anguish, and humor into songs that helped Mexicans in the Southwest recognize their shared identity. He personified the fundamental humanity of the barrios over a career that “spanned la Crisis of the 1930s, the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s, and the Chicano Movement of the 1960s” (Sheridan, 298). Guerrero turned his observations into songs that reached millions of listeners. His songs were personally filled with emotion, enough to make the listeners relate to the story being told.
Cofer addresses the cultural barriers and challenges that Latinos experience through emotional appeal, anecdotal imagery, parallelism and the use of effective periodic sentences. In her article, Cofer assesses the difficult cultural hurdles of Latin Americans with emotional appeal. She provides insight on her cultural barriers by first conveying the way she had to dress and her struggle, as it shows in this piece of text, “That morning I had organized… which to base my decision” (Cofer 5). This poignancy works to stress an agonizing feeling of uncertainty and restraint towards the author.
The poem A Step Away From Them by Frank O’Hara has five stanzas written in a free verse format with no distinguishable rhyme scheme or meter. The poem uses the following asymmetrical line structure “14-10-9-13-3” while using poetic devices such as enjambment, imagery, and allusion to create each stanza. A Step Away From Them occurs in one place, New York City. We know this because of the lines, “On/ to Times Square, / where the sign/blows smoke over my head” (13-14) and “the Manhattan Storage Warehouse.”
This poem is about a Mexican-American speaker informing the reader about the struggles in which people from different ethnic backgrounds
