Annie had the support and encouragement that she needed from her mother to continue on to study at Xavier University, which at the time was an African-American
She has a daughter. She calls herself worn-out, balding, arthritic mother. She has low self-esteem. “Maureen allowed this thought in self-mockery, to make herself feel young, but it did not have this effect”(1). Maureen is heartbroken.
1) Talk about the three De La Garza sisters-Gertrudis, Rosaura, and Tita. How do they differ from another? ` Tita is the protagonist of the book. She is the youngest of the three which means she cant get married because she has to take care of her mother. “If Tita couldn’t marry and have children, who would take care of her when she got old?”
Jeannette Walls depicted an epoch of misfortune and adversity in her memoir, The Glass Castle. Jeannette and her 3 other siblings were all in a constant struggle to survive. Rex and Mary, the parents of Jeannette and her 3 siblings, were often in a constant dichotomy between submitting to self-interest and supporting the family. Having misfit parents, Jeannette and her 3 siblings were often independent and left to fend for themselves and for the family as a whole. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls evolved the theme of ideal versus reality throughout her memoir though her countless anecdotes of her father and his unattainable plans to find gold and to build a home, named The Glass Castle, for his family and her mother’s dream to become a professional and well redound artist.
Throughout the book, Moody narrates the difference between and her mother’s way of thinking which signifies their generation gap. Anne mood’s mother, Toosweet Davis (Mama) led a challenging life of inequality and suppression. Just like many African Americans of her generation, Mrs. Davis fears to protest for justice and equality. Similarly, Toosweet lacked the confidence to stand up against her husband family. After witnessing this, Moody showed the lack of respect for her mother’s actions of belittling herself.
Some people feel unwanted, as if they don’t belong. Often they have just not found the right place to reside. Sue Monk Kidd, author of, “The Secret Life of Bees” which discusses a girl named Lily who grew up with her abusive father and the guilt of accidentally murdering her own mother. She never felt at home, especially because she hand many questions about her mother, Deborah. She ran away with her nanny, Rosaleen, in hopes of finding a place to call home.
She says that “Here also I began to wake in earnest, and shed superstition, and plan my days” (66). Throughout An American Childhood Dillard often places books with the metaphor of either waking up or time. Here Dillard discusses that after she read her books, she was awakened and started to once again become more realistic and logical about what the world is really like and what it realistically has to offer veresus her old romantic childhood ways of thinking. Annie’s brain had been awakened by books, and that changed her childhood and life forever. Dillard connects time and waking up in the quote that reads “Who turned on the lights?
There is a sharp contrast between shame and self-acceptance. One must psychologically determine which they will let dictate their actions. Shame tends to impede one’s own progression of this self-acceptance. This is an apparent feature in Dorothy Allison’s “Trash”, as she navigates between the two interchangeably by giving the reader a taste of her personal life. In this autobiography she allows the reader to delve into the personal and dark times in her life.
All the Wrong Places I’m sure we’ve all heard about young and beautiful attention seeking girls who eventually end up in sticky situations. There are times where they may not ever get out of the situation but, if they do, they attempt to change their ways. In Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” , a character named Connie fits right in that category. Connie is very vain and loves attention. Connie’s attention seeking ways lands her in a predicament that she rather not be in.
How her mother pokes and prods her represents how societies standards shape a person. In the narrator’s world, people are constantly telling her what to do, how to walk, how to talk, and how to act. She is unable to be herself and follow what
Connie’s mother keeps picking at her for everything. The mother clearly shows that the older sister June is her favorite. June does everything right and gets praised by her mother all the time. Connie hears almost every day that June saved money, helped clean the house, cooked for the family. When the mother speaks on the phone with her friends, she favors everything that June does, and criticizes Connie.
A mother and daughter are expected to always get along, and a daughter is expected to always respect her mother. Anne Frank and her mother, Edith, have a very complicated relationship. At times, Anne and her mother do not have the expected relationship, and their reality is that Anne sometimes disrespects and does not get along with her mother. Anne acknowledges their relationship when she says, “I simply can’t stand Mother, and I have to force myself not to snap at her all the time and to stay calm when I’d rather slap her across the face. I don’t know why I’ve taken such a terrible dislike to her” (Frank 51).
Imagine being invited to your sibling’s wedding, only to find out that they are marrying your significant other. The novel, Like Water for Chocolate, written by Laura Esquivel, takes place on a ranch in Mexico in which Esquivel explains the hardships that the youngest daughter, Tita, has to go through due to the De La Garza’s family tradition and Tita’s relationship with her mother. Since she is the youngest of three, the tradition is that she is not able to marry, and her main focus should be to take care of her mother until she dies. Tita had already been in love though with Pedro Muzquiz, but now he is married to her sister, Rosaura, to try to get closer to Tita. Therefore, Mama Elena knows to keep the two apart and threatens Tita if she ever does anything she is not supposed to.
But yet they both sometimes don’t respect their mother. Mama is a gentle women, she always has to be honest with her children. Mama is not an educated women her school closed at the second grade. ” I never had an education myself” (Walker, 316, 13).
“Two Kinds,” by Amy Tan, essentially revolves around the struggle of Jing Mei and her constant conflict with her mother. Throughout her life, she is forced into living a life that is not hers, but rather her mom’s vision of a perfect child; because her mother lost everything, which included her parents and kids, so her only hope was through Jing Mei. Jing Mei’s mom watches TV shows such as the Ed Sullivan Show, which gives her inspiration that her daughter should be like the people and actors. First her mom saw how on the television a three-year-old boy can name all the capitals of the states and foreign countries and would even pronounce it correctly. Her mom would quiz Jing Mei on capitals of certain places, only to discover that
