Her parents spoke only English to their kids even though amongst themselves it was Spanish only. Even though she didn’t know Spanish, her trip to Mexico gave her a new love for her heritage. She came back with a hunger to learn the language she had left at the border so many years ago. As she learns the language she writes this essay to appeal to those other people who, like her, have struggled with their heritage. She wants those who are Latino, but know Spanish as a second language, to step out and be proud of who they are.
Barrientos says “I came to the United States in 1963 at age 3 with my family and immediately stopped speaking Spanish” (Barrientos 560). Her parents found it to their best interest if their children fit into the American culture as best as they can, only because they think that it will help them reach their full potential due to the racial discrimination and stereotypes some people would hold against Tanya for being a Latino. That is why Tanya did everything in her power to just look like the average American. She also explains how “they told me I didn’t seem Mexican to them, and I took it as a complement” (Barrientos 561). She finds it flattering when people who know that she is from Mexico still think she looks like any other white American.
Personally, if it makes Gloria Anzaldua feels pride in herself for not have to translate text, if not translating text give her an “legitimate tongue”. She has that right as a person and she did use spanish words in her essay so she can tell the readers the tough times she had been through when she was forced to speak in only in English. The American society wants from Anzaldua to speak proper English, while the Mexican society also wants her to speak Spanish. The language that the author used is important. Anzaldúa remembers being punished because of speaking Spanish in her school.
I know this first hand because I volunteer in my daughters’ classroom. This leads me to believe that the Hispanics at this school really want their children to succeed, but don’t want to have a part in giving back to the school by
Page 58 she says the registrar called her and her brother, “you people”. They had a preconceived notion that because she was brown skinned she should already be able to speak Spanish. She was able to comprehend the language but unable or uncomfortable to be able to speak it. Even as she learned to speak the language the Latino community made her feel unaccepted because she spoke a broken dialect. I can relate to her as I have been in many countries.
The reason Uhmma acts this way with her kids is because she wants them not to be stressed and weak.Uhmma said in the beginning of the when she was talking to Young Ju, “Look at my rough hands. Do you think I always had hands like these? Do you want to end up like this?”(18). Meaning she doesnt want her to have that kind of life style. While this book progessed so did Uhmma, i feel that she new that Apa wasnt good but until the end when he turned on his own daughter she finally new that its
It was the language he felt love and the language that kept his family together. On the other hand English was the language that intimidated him. He could only hear sounds people make while speaking English instead of the words. Once he started learning English, he slowly realized that he needed to learn it in order to fit in society. Bilingual Education taught him it is a must to fit in the American society but this profound knowledge cost him the closeness of his family.
Cultural Adversity Bharati Mukherjee’s essay “Two Ways to Belong in America” and Santha Rama Rau’s essay “By Any Other Name” both give the reader a vivid portrait of social inequality. The characters in the story express each of their beliefs, feelings towards their struggle with cultural adversity, and their thoughts on political standards in that country. Bharati Mukherjee’s essay “Two Ways to Belong in America” is a story written to address the issues that immigrants in America face culturally and politically today. The two sisters in the story were raised with an Indian heritage background and decided to pursue their future in another country. Culturally the sisters were not ready to take on a new society that had standards against immigrants outside of their nation.
Both of these writers were molded by their mothers. Each expresses how wonderful their mother really was, contrary to what the outside world may have thought. Tan expressed her feelings by talking about test and comparing English and math and how the language in the family could have affected how she did on test. Tan makes it understandable by letting the audience know that standard tests cannot determine a person's intelligence, she is trying to say how people have different ways of thinking and different types of intelligence, and yet these standard tests only can measure a certain type of intelligence, so it is unfair. The language barrier each had to overcome often
Mora was aware that many typical Americans viewed Mexican-Americans as inferior and this led her to prefer to look and feel “American” (Mora). It was not until later years after avoiding family customs and shunning various parts of her culture such as the Mexican music her father would play on the radio, that she would come to realize this was essentially a loss of cultural identity. The language spoken in school versus home life was a major factor in the ‘alien’ feeling Mora acquired as a Mexican-American. Mora grew up feeling as though she were living two different ways. The life at school was Americanized and full of English speaking students and texts.