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Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Myth Of A Latin Woman

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In the story, “The Myth of a Latin Woman” is about the author Judith Ortiz Cofer talking about her life and growing up as a Puerto Rican girl. She talks about the struggles she had to go through, like always being under heavy surveillance by her family. She would be under their watch because she was a girl and was expected to protect her family’s honor and to behave like in her family’s terms “proper senorita”. I agree that she was forced to mature fast just at her teenage years; a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe Cofer could never act her age. She had to act and dress older than all her friends. Her life in every way was different than all the other girls she knew, because she stood out so much. Due to her being a Puerto Rican woman, she was always labeled and stereotyped. Cofer said Latin women …show more content…

They are expected to be something they are not, not all Latin women want to curse and fight every day. Not all want to be seen as sex objects and will do anything to get that type of attention. The author just wants the world to stop viewing her as just a Latin woman who is supposed to walk around half naked and have no values. She wants to be seen as a person who can accomplish great things and always get the job done, she wants to be more than just the little Puerto Rican girl she had to grow up as. Although I agree with Cofer up to a point, I cannot accept her overall conclusion that Cofer refers to Latina women as “whore, domestic, or criminal” in mainstream Anglo-American culture because it gave me a taste of the hardships that my mother had to put up with. It talks about disproving stereotypes which I really think would be better for the world if we just got rid of all stereotypes. Her explanations of their cultural reasons behind how they dress, her rhetorical style and her conversational approach made for a very wonderful piece of

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