The book I am reading is Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario. I predict that the author will explore the human rights issue of Immigration Laws and the plight of illegal aliens in the United States. I believe that this issue will be important in the story because Enrique the main character in the story is very driven to find his mother who has gone herself illegally to the United States to earn money to provide an education for her children and to better the life of her family. I made this prediction because Lourdes leaves her children in Honduras as she goes to make money in the United States and her son Enrique is left saying “Donde esta mi mami?” “Where is my mom?”
Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario is the story about a boy in Honduras whose mother left him to pursue a better life in America. This story encompasses the coming of age period of Enrique’s life and many of his experiences can be related to by other children, even in different situations. Nazario develops an interesting novel that both documents the journey of Enrique to the United States but also creates a dramatic tone like a fiction novel would have. Through her diverse use of rhetorical strategies, Nazario was able to explain the positive and negative effects of family relationships through the life of Enrique. She does this by utilizing different literary devices, most evidently, nomos, in which she relates with the story and also opens
The reality of life can often differ from childhood to adulthood. Twelve-year-old Pablo Medina experienced this first hand. In the reflective essay, “Arrival: 1960,” Medina tells about his experiences of moving from Cuba to America. Upon arriving, his expectations for America are set high. Coming from the communism he saw in Cuba, Medina was expecting a land of freedom, apart from violence, and segregation; he was expecting an overall better life for himself.
Richard Rodriguez and Gloria Anzaldúa are two authors who both immigrated to America in the 1950s and received first hand experience of the assimilation process into American society. During this time, Rodriguez and Anzaldúa had struggled adjusting to the school system. Since understanding English was difficult, it made adjusting to the American school system increasingly difficult for Rodriguez. Whereas Anzaldúa, on the other hand, had trouble adjusting to America’s school system due to the fact that she didn’t wish to stop speaking Spanish even though she could speak English. Both Rodriguez and Anzaldúa had points in their growing educational lives where they had to remain silent since the people around them weren’t interested in hearing them speaking any other language than English.
Inspiration from Mothers Do you know how many immigrants from third world countries become successful writers? I am not sure of that answer, but there are two immigrant authors Junot Diaz and Judith Ortiz Cofer, who wrote “The Dreamer” and “The Cruel Country” that have similar backgrounds and who are inspired by their mothers. Diaz is moved by the courage of a third world little girls dream of her education and Cofer searches for inspiration of her mother’s photo that reveals passionate desires and dreams. Diaz described his mother’s dream was to earn her education and become a Nurse whereas Cofer’s mother dreamed to live life on her own terms.
The themes of the realistic fiction story, Boy’s Life and the fable, Emancipation: A Life Fable are very similar. Both develop ideas about freedom, however, the exact way the theme develops is slightly different. The overall theme in each text is that freedom comes with patience. In Boy’s Life, the main character desperately wants freedom. It is the last school day of the year, and he wants nothing more than to begin summer vacation.
Different people have different goals. Everyone wants to achieve something, whether it’s becoming a surgeon or graduating high school. In the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, for Chris McCandless it was out of the ordinary. McCandless wanted to go out into the wild alone with nothing besides a few general needs. Some of those needs consisted of a journal, a camera, a large bag of rice, a small cooking utensil, matches, a knife, and some fishing twine with a hook.
He supports this argument by telling his own story of being forced to learn English by the bilingual education system. The experience he had learning English made him experience great embarrassment, sadness, and change. Rodriguez concludes his experience by discussing how English had changed his personal life at home: “We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close;no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.” By learning English, Rodriguez’s family is finally able to integrate into society without language barriers.
Being born and raised in a culture and then uprooting your life to pursue opportunities in a different culture can be hard in three ways. First, speaking a foreign language and then coming to America where majority of the people speak English can be difficult to adapt to. When a person has grown accustomed to speaking their native language, it can be problematic to have to pick up an entire new language. Possibilities can be limited because of the restrictions on one’s ability to communicate with other. Second, if a teenager comes to America from a foreign country they will have to take on responsibilities that they normally would not.
We all have a reason to be here and the journey of life is to find our purpose in life. It is what makes life so great, but to get there we must take risks and overcome that fear. People are afraid of taking risks because of failure. They are afraid to fail and not get anywhere. However, that fear can be overcome is they keep pushing and keep trying and keep taking risks.
The plight of the Vietnamese immigrant in America was a necessary one to tell. It is a story which Viet Thanh Nguyen has lived his entire life, all that he needed was a catalyst to write it. One came in 2011, when, as a part of the Arab Spring, Syrian rebels attempted to overthrow the Assad regime. Their attempt lead to a bloody conflict, which still rages to this day, as well as the displacement of over 11 million people, as of the most recent statistics. While it may not have been the worldwide migrant crisis it is today, by 2013 enough people were forced out of Syria that the world took notice.
Immigration during the 20th century led to to differences and cultural changes in the country spreading diversity. Immigrants have came to this country escaping the government from their country, looking for comfort,or chances and hope for their family. The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica written by Judith Ortiz Cofer, demonstrates the struggle of how immigrants wanted comfort the feeling of being accepted even as they speak a different language. The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica captures the struggle of immigrants as they were embedded into a new life a new culture. Take The Tortillas out of your poetry written by Rudolfo Anaya demonstrated how the poets that tried to add their culture into their poetry were rejected for having a different language.
For example this quote “Mexican Americans or Afro- Americans were considered dangerous radicals while law- abiding citizens to drop their cultural baggage at the border.” explains that when natives they drop all their ethics and traits to fit in. Image is everything early on, but not fitting into the community again is hard. The author also writes to persuade readers that that she is a true Latina, because she tries to take spanish lessons. Mexican Americans are also seen as people with little education and poor.
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.
The answer to these questions can only be answered by ourselves. But sometimes, we can figure out why other people go on quests and what they learn from them by reading their own story. In the epic The Odyssey by Homer, the main hero of the story, Odysseus, leaves Troy to go back home to Ithaca to see his family and to stop the suitors that have placed themselves in his house, although there are many challenges he faces. In the poem The Journey by Mary Oliver, the speaker of the poem, instead of trying to go back home
