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The Revolt Of The Cockroach People Sparknotes

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Oscar Zeta Acosta was a Chicano lawyer during the Chicano movement in the 1960’s. In Acosta's book The Revolt of the Cockroach People he uses the word cockroach to identify a Chican@ or a Mexican-American. Which are the people who don’t belong nowhere but at the same time belong to Mexico and also America. In the book Oscar Zeta Acosta said “The cockroach people you know the little beast everyone steps on.” He Categorizes Mexican American and Chican@s as cockroaches and is downgrading them to give the Reader an image of what society sees Mexican Americans and Chican@s as. Just like cockroaches Chican@s and Mexican-Americans are viewed as undesirable human beings, infest, repulsive and disease carrying, and simply a dirty pest. Throughout “The …show more content…

For Acosta His education seem to have a great impact in the way he views the world. While attending high school he came upon a disagreement of being paired with a Mexican girl rather than an American girl. When confronting Wilke he simply said “the school board instructed me not to let Mexicans March with Americans.“ not only was the white society forbidding people from different races to be paired up together, he was also in conflict with his Mexican race because by not marching with the Mexican girl he was seen as stuck up and ashamed of his Mexican race. I’m Society our on downfall is making others feel that they do not belong and are different. In this case it was a view of how Acosta did not seem to fit in his surroundings. This being either by the way he looked or the way he thinks and views the world. Continuing his education Acosta got his lawyer degree and his license as a way to prove that even a fat brown Chicano could become something and attend a higher education. Acosta not being accepted by the people he was surrounded by drove him to the outside of his community. There’s only made Acosta second-guessing himself and asking himself if he was ashamed of his race. It seemed as if he was starting to feel as if he did not fit in the White community but also did not fit in the Mexican

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This is because the movement itself began as a search for identity in a nation where Chicanos where once classified as White, but never received any of the rights associated with it and where later reclassified as Hispanic. It is also because what was once considered Mexican culture is no more as it has been taken, manipulated, and killed by the Anglos in their conquest. In “I am Joaquin” we see this concept throughout the work in a variety of forms that range from what Mexicans are to the concept of being Chicano. One major example of the search for Identity in the work is shown in the beginning with the paradox question where many young Chicanos are forced to choose between cultural life in poverty or stability at the price of their culture. Basically it states that they must choose between embracing their heritage at the cost of stability or to reject it and conform to the Anglo world and have a chance to be successful.

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