Book Of Unknown American Analysis

In the passage Nancy Mairs calls herself cripple. She uses different rhetorical mode and devices such as similes to the reader an emotional appeal. In the passage cripple is used to symbolize handicap and disabled. This gives the reader an emotional appeal to how she’s feeling. Nancy Mairs being called handicap lowers confidence, making her feel weak. When people hear handicap they think not able to care for themselves. Nancy wants to be known as a tough individual able to take care of herself. The reader can feel the agony of what Nancy is feeling. The tone of this passage is determination and agony. Nancy feels that cripple is more stronger word than “handicap” or ‘disabled.” The word word cripple gives Nancy hope and strength and makes her a strong individual. But her having to go through agony and pain of being called handicap or disabled, doesn’t give her the confidence she needs. Even though Nancy calls herself cripple to give hope and strength. Cripple symbolizes weak, meaning not being able to take care of herself but in this passage cripple symbolizes confidence and strength.

As an individual who developed a serious case of multiple sclerosis, Nancy Mairs begins to see herself in a different way, not as a normal person but as a “cripple”. As she opens with “I am a cripple.”. The disease ripped away her ability to walk. The disease allowed her to realize the deeper meaning of derogatory terms, such as “disabled” or “handicapped, especially the term “cripple”. The disease redrew her personal sketch, becoming something though physically lacking, yet resilient beyond comparison. By combining rhetorical strategies with rhetorical appeals, Mairs presents herself in a way that invokes an emotional response from the reader.

Mental health issues ranging from the doubts and uncertainties have become a part of daily routine, towards serious long term situation which can be very complex for managing and having a diversifying impact on the overall live of the people. The usual child health leads to contribute towards overall development (Watson & Le Couteur, 2011). Therefore it is important to take special care of people with complex disability as they turn out to be sensitive enough about the situation and environment they are living in.

Alma is one of the main characters that Cristina Henriquez focuses on in The Book of Unknown Americans. Based on her internal dialogue, Alma is overly critical of herself. After all these years she still blames herself for what's happened to Maribel. Due to her critical nature she's also very wary of everyone and everything especially if it concerns Maribel. She was wary first of Mayor, then of her neighbors. She never truly approves Mayor and Maribel's relationship either. Alma does not show compassion. I don't think she will show compassion towards herself until she finally accepts the fact that Maribel's brain damage isn't her fault. The good note is that in the end she begins to understand that fact. Because of Alma's perspective towards life she's not really good at interacting with others. The person she gets along with the best is Celia because they reminisce about where they came, speaking in Spanish and pointing out the differences between their country and America. Her inability to make connections is due to her criticalness and her wariness. She doesn't hold herself too well during difficult situations. For example, she worked up a lot of courage

She recognizes that her own mother regretted giving birth to her, “It saddened her to have given birth to such an item as myself,” (263). The unsettling implication that a woman has given birth to an object, rather than a living, breathing, human being, is made tragic upon realizing that the protagonist views this as fair judgement and in turn she not only accepts this truth as her own but she agrees with it, “I was a thing,” (265). The narrator’s sympathizing view of this cruel impression helps guide the reader in understanding how damaging this type of isolation is to the incapacitated. The isolation resulted in the protagonist genuinely believing that she has no place in society and instead of fighting against the majority she simply took their verisimilitude and made it her

In American society, if American’s do not look the same as society’s ideal image, then they are not considered normal. Those non normal American’s are treated as if they have a plague and are left on the outside always looking in. The people who have something that sets them apart from the norm, such as a disability, should not be treated differently than the people who are society’s version of normal. In “Disability” by Nancy Mairs, the problem of judging a book by its cover discusses individual examples relating to people who have a disability.

Julia Alvarez's historical novel, In The Time of the Butterflies, captures the lives of the Mirabal sisters and the Dominican Republic under the appalling dictatorship of Trujillo. Unfortunately, in a dangerous scheme to overthrow Trujillo, the Mirabal sisters meet their tragic fate. Before their death, these martyrs dodged through dozens of obstacles. In the Dominican Republic, it was extremely difficult for women to be respected and taken seriously because they were seen as domesticated and inferior. This old ideology of gender roles gravely affected the Mirabal sisters and their participation in their revolution against Trujillo; however, they still managed to challenge these gender limitations throughout the book.

From Mexico to the United States, a very dangerous journey some take to have a better life or to reunite with their family. Even people who are as inexperienced, such as Enrique, go through this dangerous path to reunite himself with his mother. In the novel, Enrique's Journey, author Sonia Nazario uses literary devices such as theme, characterization, and POV to show us how events change a character along the way and reveals how a character truly is. Sonia Nazario uses theme to show us the drastic change in character, characterization to show us how the dangers of this journey has an impact on someone, and POV to show us how the character is someone else’s perspective.

‘Morning Rain’ by Hisaye Yamamoto and ‘Chang’ by Sigrid Nunez are short stories in the center of which remains a father – daughter relationship motif. It is not a very common topic in Asian American literature, and according to Wong and Santa Ana its representation in a literary texts is ‘a fairly recent phenomenon.’ Both Yamamoto and Nunez are creating the picture of the fathers through the eyes of their daughters. In these short stories, the children are discovering various parts of their dads’ identities by looking at their words and silences. The latter aspect of their behaviour becomes especially important, in understanding the true selves of the fathers, as they are an extremely quiet characters. However, their quietness does not always

In “The Social Construction of Disability,” Susan Wendell briefly discusses how the fast pace of American life impacts the social construction of disability through an inability for people with “disabilities” to maintain expectations of a high-performance level. Wendell also claims that the pace of life causes disability in many people’s lives, but quickly moves on to another topic, referencing chapter four of Barbara Hillyer’s Feminism and Disability in the footnotes as a place for more information on this argument. In Hillyer’s chapter “Productivity and Pace,” she writes to the feminist and disability communities, analyzing how the pace of life affects them both in similar ways. Through an analysis of how people with disabilities are forced to set their own daily pace, Hillyer hopes to encourage others to learn about the necessity of slowing down.

Scott Hamilton once stated, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” Disability is only an obstacle in a person's life, but it does not set the identity of that person. John Steinbeck's novel shows how disabled people are treated differently by writing about their heartbreak and sorrow. Many individuals with disabilities feel that a disability is a wall blocking them from achieving their goals. In our society, people are told what to be and what to do with their disability, but one should have the choice to carve their pathway to success. In John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck portrayed a political statement by looking at mental and physical disabilities through different characters such as Curley's Wife, Crooks, and Lennie.

In Gary Soto’s short story ‘Growing Up,” the main character, Maria, says, “‘I know, I know. You’ve said that a hundred times,’ she snapped.” Maria is acting ungrateful because she doesn’t want to go on vacation with her family and she is arguing with her father about it instead of being grateful for what she has. Being grateful is feeling or showing an appreciation of kindness and being thankful. In the story Maria argues with her father about not wanting to go on vacation with her family and claims that she is old enough to stay home by herself. Maria is trying to grow up too fast and she put her family to the side instead of being grateful. In this story, conflict, characterization, and symbolism all have an effect on the overall theme.

The Religion of Disability: How Flannery O’Connor Uses the Concept of Disability in “The Lame Shall Enter First”

The Body Silent, by Robert Murphy, was published in 1987. The story is about Murphy’s personal account of the physical and social changes he underwent after becoming a quadriplegic. Robert Murphy was an anthropologist at Columbia University. In his early career, he spent a year observing indigenous tribes in the Amazon with his wife. In 1972, Murphy experienced a muscle spasm that was later realized to be a symptom of a growing tumor in his spinal column stretching from the C2 vertebra to the T8 vertebra, leading to partial paralysis; he underwent a few surgeries to reduce the size of the tumor, but eventually his paralysis spread until he was fully quadriplegic in 1986. Injuries and growths in the high cervical region of the spine, including the C2, have limited or no movement from the neck down, though a person

“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my reality” (Frida Kahlo). Frida Kahlo was a famous Mexican painter born on July 6, 1907. She was only 47 years old when she just days after her final exhibit. Frida’s life was filled with a lot of pain, both emotional and physical. In her childhood, Frida was slightly disabled from polio. Later on when she was eighteen, she was in a terrible bus accident, which destroyed her body. She had broken her spinal column and her pelvis, which lead to her having metal rods insert through her spine and pelvis. This left her bed ridden, but it didn’t destroy her soul. While she was destined to never walk again, she didn’t let her disability,