Culture is something that is important to everyone. When a person goes from one place to another, the shock of the different culture can be considerably large on a person’s character and their identity as a whole. In Into the Beautiful North, Urrea illuminates cultural collision and its affect on character’s sense of identity through Nayeli’s naivety and her reaction towards how America truly is throughout her journey.
Nayeli’s naivety really stems from her home of Tres Camarones. Tres Camarones is a very small, close-knit community where everyone knows each other, with most of the population consisting of women. In terms of technology, they are very underdeveloped and do not have much contact with other places. She grew up in Tres Camarones, and being such a
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In Nayeli’s dreams of leaving her hometown, “she was eager to see a concert, ride a train, wear fancy clothes, and sip exotic coffees on a snowy boulevard. She had seen elevators in a thousand movies, and she longed to ride one, though not on the roof of one like Jackie Chan” (Urrea 8). All of those things are too far out of reach for Nayeli because of the small, unknown area she lives in, which is why she gains false hope about the way the world truly is, leading to her being overly optimistic about her trip to America. Since Tres Camarones does not have much contact with other people outside of their community, the only information Nayeli has to go on are stories from her aunt Irma and the expectations she made in her head, making the thought of crossing the Mexican border into America seem easy. In the beginning, before she leaves for America, she says, “The Americans will be happy we're there! Even