ipl-logo

Jimmy Santiago Baca Meaning

567 Words3 Pages

Jimmy Santiago Baca primarily uses a sarcastic tone in “So Mexicans are Taking Jobs from Americans,” to get his message across that Mexicans are not simply stealing jobs from Americans. Many consider the topics and ideas that the poem tackles too political for discussion; however, Jimmy decided to share his ideas anyways. Jimmy Santiago Baca tries to make his strong argument in his poem by sharing what he sees in the overall situation. Jimmy is also trying to persuade others to think the way he does by using a sarcastic tone throughout the poem. Depending on the reader, the poem can either be effective or ineffective based on the reader’s views. However, the purpose of the poem may also be to spread the frustrations and hardships that Mexicans …show more content…

In the poem, Baca tries to deliver a message that Americans have a false and stereotypical perception of Mexicans. His message is that Mexicans are not trying to steal jobs from Americans. In the poem’s second stanza, Baca asks: “Do they sneak into town at night, / and as you’re walking home with a whore, / do they mug you, a knife at your throat, / saying I want your job?” (8-11) Baca uses violent actions as sarcastic examples of ways Mexicans “steal good jobs” from Americans. These examples also indicate that Baca is trying to attack the position that Mexicans are dangerous job-stealing criminals that have no other reasons to be in America. To attack the negative views Americans have of Mexicans, Baca shows the faults in America such as: politicians using false accusations to gain followers (12-170) or large farming corporations buying out small farms from white farmers (25-29), and firing white people to hire lower wage illegal immigrants. Baca is also sure to point out that the poor are struggling to survive with such low income while multi-million dollar corporations are profiting off the poor’s misfortunes (33-37). Many Americans will disagree with Baca’s message because of him making a generalization of Americans, and insulting their

Show More
Related

A Gringo In The Lettuce Fields Analysis

353 Words | 2 Pages

In “A Gringo in the Lettuce Fields,” Gabriel Thompson spends about two months cutting lettuce in the hot fields of Yuma alongside immigrants laborers. At first glimpse, the immigrants thought he was either crazy or an undercover immigration agent ready to deport them back to their home country. But within a few days just outside Watsonville, Thompson got to know some immigrants and sensed the backbreaking, harsh conditions work of these immigrant laborers. He would then get physically drained, and never became good enough to keep up with the machine that puts along with the rows of lettuce driving the pace of the crews. Thompson, in the end, shines a bright light on the underside of the economy, exposing injustices endured by low-paid laborers

Read More

Quixote's Soldiers Summary

741 Words | 3 Pages

In order to write this book, the author clearly uses different manuscripts and papers that helped him to explain and show the situation of this social movement. He also uses and gets information from people that were living those situations, for instance in Chapter one, he mentions a note from Journalist Ruiz Ibañez: “Contrary to the common belief that those groups are composed of “punks” and hoodlums….”1. Related to him, he is an American historian and sociology that obtained his sociology and political science degrees in the University of Texas at Austin and Yale University, as well. Currently, he is a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and he is president of the Center for Latino Policy Research. He wrote not only Quixote’s Soldiers but also, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986.

Read More

Analysis Of Unemployed Mami, By Willie Perdomo

1112 Words | 5 Pages

The Puerto Rican author starts the poem saying, even though she does not have a job Mami still works hard (Perdomo 2002). Maybe it sounds contradictory it, but it summarizes the lives of thousands of housewives that work truly hard to raise her kids and to maintain her family together. Perdomo explains how hard a mother works and how difficult her life is. The author particularizes the fact that mothers work educating their kids and killing cockroaches that could represent the temptations of life.

Read More

Avocado Lake Gary Soto Analysis

1578 Words | 7 Pages

“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

Read More

Poem Analysis Of La Migra By Pat Mora

510 Words | 3 Pages

La Migra is a poem written by Pat Mora about the Mexican - American immigration issue. It’s purpose is to acknowledge the emotions and sentiments of the Mexican immigrants who try to come to the United States illegally. The denotation of the poem’s title means immigration and the connotation is referring to the police officers standing at the Mexico-United States border. The poem is divided into two stanzas to acknowledge immigration through the different perspectives of the illegal immigrant and also through the eyes of the border police. The first stanza is through the perspective of the male border cop, who thinks his power and nonessential items make his superior to the immigrants.

Read More

How To Tame A Wild Tongue By Gloria Anzaldúa Analysis

1103 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More

The Latino Threat Summary

541 Words | 3 Pages

In Leo R. Chavez’s ethnography, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, the claimed problem of Latino immigration, specifically Mexicans, is tackled using interviews, statistics, and other works of literature. Chavez’s ethnography not only discusses Latino immigration but Latino invasion, integration, organ transplants and even Latina fertilization. One of Chavez’s big topics is on how the media influences the public to believe that Latinos are planning an invasion or take-over in order to gain the land that was originally Mexico’s. The topic of Latina reproduction and fertilization comes up multiple times through Chavez’s ethnography. Another main topic that plays a part in Chavez’s argument is the Latino role in public marches and the citizenship aspect of their actions.

Read More

Discrimination In Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees

1437 Words | 6 Pages

Over the years, immigrants have influenced many aspects of American society and has had a vital role in shaping the United States to what it is today. According to the US Census Bureau, an agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System responsible for producing data about the American people and economy, “non-Hispanic white population in the U.S. declined from 85 percent in 1965 to 62.2 percent in 2014, and the forecast is for the percentage of non-Hispanic whites to fall to 43.6 percent in 2060” (qtd. in Walsh). Despite the rise of immigrants and the profound impact they have had on society, many immigrants face perpetual discrimination; this idea has appeared many times throughout Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Bean Trees. Taking place during the 1970s, the main character, Taylor, moves from Kentucky to Arizona; along the way, she meets Esperanza and Estevan, illegal immigrants from Guatemala. As she gets to know them better, she notices they are forced to live a monotonous, arduous life which implies that immigrants face prejudice from Americans who claim to be accepting.

Read More

Poem Analysis: Legal Alien By Pat Mora

429 Words | 2 Pages

In the poem, Pat Mora is expressing how she feels as if Americans and Mexicans both treated her like a different species. “Their eyes say, “you may speak Spanish but you are not like me”, (line 12 and 13). Here, Pat Mora is talking about how even though she speaks Spanish, and is a part of the Mexican culture, Mexicans don’t see her as a Mexican. To

Read More

Stereotypes In Samuel Huntington's Article 'The Hispanic Challenge'

750 Words | 3 Pages

Samuel Huntington’s article The Hispanic Challenge argues that Hispanics, specifically Mexicans, are not true American citizens. According to Huntington, Americans are people who believe in the American creed. However, he believes this creed is being threatened. For some time now, large influxes of Hispanic immigrants have been coming to the US and have brought their own culture with them. The writer of Speaking in Tongues, Gloria Anzaldua, believes that Hispanics have the right to hold onto their culture in America.

Read More

La Mexicano Analysis

871 Words | 4 Pages

Octavio Paz, a Mexican poet and essayist, is one of the many philosophers with a written piece regarding his understanding of Lo Mexicano. Paz’s “Sons of La Malinche” was first published in the Labyrinth of Solitude in 1950 and is a rather grim interpretation of the Mexican character, however, it captures the crisis of identity that Mexico was burdened with after the conquest. Paz uses the Spanish term “chingar,” (when literally translated means “to screw, to violate”) and its associated phrases to understand the conquest and the effect

Read More

Summary Of Mexican American Culture

899 Words | 4 Pages

Up until the 1960s Anglo social scientists wrote most of the literature about the people of Mexican- descent in the United States. Their analysis of Mexican American culture and history reflected the hegemonic beliefs, values, and perceptions of their society. As outsiders, Anglo scholars were led by their own biases and viewed Mexicans as inferior, savage, unworthy and different. Because Mexican scholars had not yet begun to write about their own experiences, these stereotypes were legitimized and reproduced in the literature. However, during the mid- 1960s scholars such as Octavio Ignacio Romano, Nick Vaca, Francisco Armando Rios, and Ralph Ricatelli began to reevaluate the literature written by their predecessors.

Read More

Summary Of Myth Of The Latin Woman

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

Analysis Of Danez Smith's Dinosaurs In The Hood

1302 Words | 6 Pages

The making of movies, or the concept of it, has been around since the beginning of the 18th century. The lens of the camera has captured some of the most beautiful things, but also the most prejudice. Stereotypes of races, ethnicities, and gender have always been around but were widely considered acceptable in the films of that era. Almost as long as there have been people filming, there have been people fighting for equality to be presented on the big screen. Danez Smith is one of these modern fighters in his free verse poem “Dinosaurs in the Hood.”

Read More

American Literature: Literature Changed Over Time

1749 Words | 7 Pages

This poem is about a Mexican-American speaker informing the reader about the struggles in which people from different ethnic backgrounds

Read More

More about Jimmy Santiago Baca Meaning

Related Topics

Open Document