Comparing When My Brother Was An Aztec And In The Hour Of The Wolf

Native American culture is full of rich traditions and values that many, myself included, have never taken the time to understand or even consider. Some of those traditions are strange to many outsiders today, and to the European settlers who took over their land hundreds of years ago. However, other aspects of Native American culture are rather similar to modern culture. There was, and still is, an emphasis placed on community within the tribe. This included stressing the importance of the individual, but also the family and the tribe itself. Natalie Diaz’s poem When My Brother Was an Aztec and Betty Louise Bell’s story “In the Hour of the Wolf” revolves around this belief that family is the most important thing, although the family and the

The parents are so blinded by their love for their son, that they cannot see what is killing not only him, but also the entire family. In the third stanza Diaz writes, “They forgot who was dying, who was already dead” (Line 8). This line is important because it helps establish this haze that it seems her parents are in. They seem dazed and confused, almost like they are also on drugs. This line, and others like it in the poem, creates this image in my head of two grown adults in a drug induced stupor following around their son with outstretched hands full of whatever drug he desired. They were almost enabling him to continue his poor life decisions because he knew they would always be there for him. The parents may have chosen to place the family above the needs of their individual selves, but the son believed the opposite. “Neighbors were amazed my parents’ hearts kept / growing back-- It said a lot about my parents, or parents’ hearts (Lines 20-21). In this line Diaz mentions that more than just her own parents would be willing to sacrifice this much for their children. However, her tone throughout the poem seems to establish that she herself would not be one of those parents. She has witnessed during her childhood the negative effects putting the family

Even as a child, the narrator seemed to think she was better than the “Indians” she grew up around. “That one she took you to when you had that terrible diarrhea Alice Sixkiller saved your life many times, girlie, so don’t you go acting like we’re a bunch a dumb Indians and yer Miss Perfect. Hear?” (Bell 198). In this quote the narrator’s mother scolds her for believing she is better than them because she believes in things like modern medicine when Native American culture tended to lean towards medicine men and women who had no formal training. This quote is also extremely interesting because it is one of the few in the story where the reader gets to hear the mother speak. It creates even more of a distance between the narrator and her mother because there is an audible difference between the way they speak. The mother’s dialogue makes her appear almost uneducated compared to her daughter who has left the tribe and moved to California for a new life. She didn’t let her family or her background hold her down, however, in the end she almost seemed to miss her old life. Perhaps, unlike Diaz, she needed to put more emphasis on her family and less on herself as an