Barrientos writes her narrative in the chronological order allowing the audience to understand and follow along in her quest to re-enter the Latino community. Barrientos goes through an identity crisis where she stayed away from speaking Spanish so that she could conform in the American society. Barrientos was once told that she did not seem “Mexican”
Assimilation is the process of adapting or adjusting to the culture of a group or nation, or the state of being. It also is the state or condition of being assimilated, or of being absorbed into something. An example of will be, assimilation of immigrants into American life. Assimilation connects a lot to the novel because Kii Yazhi has to adapt to the ways of Americans when he goes to boarding school and has to act like them. In the novel Code Talkers the author Bruchac perfectly shows and explains assimilation.
This article examines Rudolfo Anaya, Tomas Rivera, and Reyna Grande attempt to capture the cultural identity of Mexican American by interweaving the lives of their protagonist and that of their families with religion, spiritualism, myth, and mysticism. The author compares the internal pilgrimage of the young protagonist from Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, Rivera’s … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him and Grande’s The Distance Between Us: A memoir to find their shared identity as Mexican Americans by interweaving Spanish and indigenous religious figures. On The Distance Between Us: A memoir the author emphasizes on the way in which Abuelita’s Chinta role as the curandera gives peace to Grande after being indirectly abandoned by her parents.
Gloria Anzaldúa's personal experience growing up in the Rio Grande Valley was inspiration for Borderlands, which was published in 1987. In this highly acclaimed work, she explores the effects of the Mexican-American border on her self-identification as mixed race, Chicana, a woman, and a lesbian. Shunned from each of these groups, Anzaldúa creates a new mestiza identity which both allows for and encourages a synthesis of disparate elements of identity into a synergistic whole. A mestiza is a woman of mixed Caucasian, Hispanic, and Native American descent. This consciousness which encourages opposition and contradiction is made necessary by the conditions created by the geographical, political, and psychological border.
They are two different regions of people that assimilated into someone’s else society. According to the information given in the book Foreigners in Their own land and the film given in this class assimilation is when someone gradually adopts characteristics of another group. For example, when adopting their culture, language, religion all customs that the other group fallows. As the examples I’ll be providing in the next paragraph, Mexicans adopted Anglos characteristics and the Americans adopted the Mexicans customs. The examples are in two different states far away from each other.
The immigrants entering the United States throughout its history have always had a profound effect on American culture. However, the identity of immigrant groups has been fundamentally challenged and shaped as they attempt to integrate into U.S. society. The influx of Mexicans into the United States has become a controversial political issue that necessitates a comprehensive understanding of their cultural themes and sense of identity. The film Mi Familia (or My Family) covers the journey and experiences of one Mexican-American (or “Chicano”) family from Mexico as they start a new life in the United States. Throughout the course of the film, the same essential conflicts and themes that epitomize Chicano identity in other works of literature
Assimilation is usually meant to indicate what happens to immigrants in a new land. However, “rejection, loneliness, discrimination—these were the byproducts of living in the United States” (Ghymn 37). In Marilyn Chin’s essay on assimilation “How I Got That Name,” the speaker acquaints the readers how she got the American name “Marilyn.” The tension between the two cultures is evident, for the speaker is treated as “Model Minority.” Her race and ethnicity define her; in fact, the stereotypes inscribed with her race restricted and cage her significance in the society.
Many stories embody the cultural aspects of Mexican-Americans and their struggles with living in a discriminatory society. Stories like With
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.
Cofer addresses the cultural barriers and challenges that Latinos experience through emotional appeal, anecdotal imagery, parallelism and the use of effective periodic sentences. In her article, Cofer assesses the difficult cultural hurdles of Latin Americans with emotional appeal. She provides insight on her cultural barriers by first conveying the way she had to dress and her struggle, as it shows in this piece of text, “That morning I had organized… which to base my decision” (Cofer 5). This poignancy works to stress an agonizing feeling of uncertainty and restraint towards the author.
The article “The making of a Mexican American Dream” mentions that Americans have this notions that immigrants ultimately need to assimilate in order to fit the mold of the “American dream”. Sarah Menkedick, the author of this article, cites Milton Gordon ’s book, Assimilation in American life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins, to offer an example of this idea and how immigrants are expected to adapt to the American way of life. Mekedick states, “according to Gordon, assimilation depended first upon acculturation: the immigrant group’s willingness and ability to learn English, and to adopt white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class customs, after which point its members would ultimately identify with and marry into the dominant
Skerry offers, “Immigrant leaders and advocates claim that America is a racist society that will not allow "people of color" to become part of the mainstream of American life. Alternatively, it is argued that the assimilation of such individuals into that mainstream is an insidious process that robs them of their history and self-esteem. No one ever bothers to explain how both claims can be true”. Carroll Rodas quantifies assimilation in definition put forth by Richard Alba and Victor Nee as, "the decline of an ethnic distinction and its corollary cultural and social differences”. Speaking of the 11 million illegal resident immigrants, they remain fragmented and disjoined from the country in the underground makeshift community, unable to engage in a society’s common culture as requested of the assimilation process.
El Olvido by Judith Ortiz Cofer, covers the dangers of forgetting yours roots and culture. It emphasizes the idea that forgetting where one comes from and creating adjustments in a new setting, may be dangerous to the person. Many people are able to relate to this text, but Cofer was able to direct this to the hispanic race, as the common spanish names Jesus, Maria and Jose are used. This poem made a mood that made us feel sad and worried for the person telling the poem.
Within each book, it questions the message of “culture and gender” (Louelí, “An Interpretive Assessment of Chicano Literature and Criticism”). Clearly, positive figures influenced how the Chicano community acted then and now. Rudolfo Anaya and other Chicano writers
From the start, it is clear that T.C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain aims to shed a light on the topic of Mexican immigrants in the United States. However, by having both a Mexican and an American woman share similar violent experiences with men, Boyle also places an emphasis on the less pronounced theme of sexual violence and discrimination against women, even in polar opposite realities. Early on, an invisible bond begins to form between the two main female characters, America, a recent Mexican immigrant and mother to be, and Kyra a successful white businessman. And while they never actually meet one another, as they endure and recover from their own personal problematic experiences with certain men, they are affected immensely by these events. America tries her best balance her new life of being an illegal, living in the ravine of Topanga Canyon with Candido, finding work and preparing for her baby to come.