In El Norte and Maria Full of Grace, border and border crossing are the key themes. These films provide not only a vivid image on how people cross the ‘physical’ borders, but also reveal the other ‘abstract’ borders, racial, cultural, and classed, that intersect lives. The siblings in El Norte, Enrique, and Rosa Xuncax, have travelled through the abandoned tunnel in Tijuana, Mexico to go to the Promised Land, the U.S., in the hope of getting a better life. In the same boat, Maria in Maria Full of Grace is risking her life as a drug mule successfully crossing the U.S. border. Again, her decision to commit such a risky act is because she wants to improve her family’s economic circumstances. What is coming in their narratives is another heart-breaking episode of their struggles to cross another border in the ‘North.’ Racial, cultural, sexual, and classed …show more content…
Taking the protagonists’ experiences as portrayed in El Norte and Maria Full of Grace as a first step in understanding a singular word border, I aim to compose a literature review and investigate how border develops into a wider issue concerning borderland, border crossing and border theory. Having knowledge of the plethora of the term border such as border theory is believed to be beneficial for people look critically at issues on wider topics such as identity. Collecting and reading literatures on borders and border crossing will be the next step to do to understand better the context embedded in those terms. Many scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa has initially started defining border and its complexity. In addition, by looking at what the protagonists in EL Norte and Maria Full of Grace have undergone, the concept of the physical and abstract border is in line with what Anzaldúa argued in her book, Borderlands/La Frontera, where she contends that border connotes both concrete and nonconcrete
In the film Precious Knowledge, and Chapter One of Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua, both the film and the book stress the importance of the Hispanic lives. While the film was based on the lives of Chicano/a students who were predicted to fail in life, the book focused on the transformation of the valley and the types of treatments the women of color received. Precious Knowledge, was about recording the life styles these high school students had as they were growing up. With their permission, a total of three students, Pricila Rodriguez, Crystal Terriquez, and Gilbert Esparza, were recorded in detail from the moment they were at home to the moment they attended the Tucson Magnet High school. What makes the students in Precious Knowledge
In this essay about the article redacted by Reese Jones Why to Build a Border Wall? different aspects will be presented. A summary of the topic will be presented to explain what the author is trying to communicate and his point of view in his article. Also, a rhetorical and ideas critique along with a personal reflection will be presented. This article is about the purpose of border walls and their benefits from dividing two different places. In the rhetorical critique, his appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos will be identified and explained briefly, also, in the ideas critique, his ideas will be critiqued to support a different point of view.
All three of these works examine the word “trespass” through three unique lenses. Morris Louis, Julia Alvarez, and Junot Diaz’s goal is to show how commonly humans tend to intrude onto unfamiliar settings, how it happens in different situations, and the importance of considering its effect on everyone. In Julia Alvarez’s novel How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a Dominican family struggles to find what it means to fully belong to a foreign setting. The parents, Mami and Papi raise four daughters in an environment where someone’s uniqueness was never appreciated by the general population.
At the same time, the blunt-sounding Coutts is located on the Canadian side, emphasizing the fluidity and complexity of identity. The interaction between the mother and the border guard is another noteworthy example, as it illustrates the tension between the mother's Blackfoot identity and the dominant cultural norms of the border control system. Despite the border guard's insistence, the mother's unwavering stance on her Blackfoot citizenship underscores the central idea that identity is a personal and subjective concept shaped by individual experiences and cultural beliefs. In conclusion, "Borders" by Thomas King is a stirring tale that explores the human struggle to preserve one's identity in the face of adversity. " Borders" by Thomas King not only delves into an individual's efforts but also brings to light the more significant societal problem of cultural assimilation that affects marginalized communities.
Numerous screenwriters and directors have often dealt in their films with the theme of borders, whether literal and officially recognised, like military ranks or state frontiers, or abstract and metaphorical, like those of morality, justice, race, and gender, along with several others. As a consequence, as John Gibbs points out, one could assemble these movies, especially those taking place on the confines between Mexico and United States, under the label of ‘border films’ (2002: 27); thus contextualising them in a very specific tradition, which includes pictures such as Touch of Evil (Orson Welles 1958) or The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones 2005). Accordingly, another notable movie belonging to the ‘border film tradition’ is Lone Star: an acclaimed 1996 hybrid of western and mystery film conventions, directed and written by independent filmmaker John Sayles. The picture recounts the story of a murder investigation, which leads the main character, Sheriff Sam
Hi Kimberly, I appreciate how genuinely you stated that it is very difficult to address all the issues in Maria 's story. The issue of immigration is complex and it generates a multitude of events. It is for this reasons that topics such as the health care and the immigration are the still on the debates table of elections for the last decades. Merjona
Latour is contemplative, straightforward, and dignified man who is able to find peace in himself and undergo a self journey along with change. He is able to embrace change by learning how to serve the Native American and the Mexican people of New Mexico. As Latour grows thorough his personal observations and struggles, he shows how strong his faith is by doing more that just build a Cathedral, but by teaching others to grow for their survival. When he arrives to his ‘new home’ Latour is welcomed with more than open arms as his arrival is seen as a prayer by the people around. After learning that there are children to be baptized and marriages to be performed, Latour takes it as a sign that he has made the right choice going to New Mexico.
The group I was a part of was assigned a passage from Thomas King’s short story “Borders”. The short story followed a mother and son as they attempted to cross the border to visit the sister, who lived in Utah. The passage focused on the time that the mother and son spent at the border, due to their identification as being Blackfoot, and refusal to conform to identifying as Canadian or American. This passage is a central part of the story, since it addresses the issues of identity that the mother and son face regarding their identity of being Blackfoot. The assigned passage contained a prevailing number of linguistic elements, as well as symbolism.
The author spectacles Mariam as a very naive girl, who also may suffer some confidence issues because of the result of Nana’s abusive words, “Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami.” While developing more knowledge about Nana, she illustrates herself as an unstable woman who has been beaten up by the everyday tasks in life. It confuses me as to how Mariam does not recognize that Nana is sick and needs psychiatric help because of her obstacles in the past. For example, the affair Jalil had on his other wives. It shocks me how disrespectful and rude Nana is when she talks about Jalil.
The majority of illegal immigrant’s chances for success is limited. It is more likely for people who have already been successful in life to achieve their dream than those have not had the chance to. The Tortilla Curtain illustrates the hardships and the discriminations illegal immigrants face with higher class Americans. The coyotes symbolize the immigrant’s lifestyle and how they are viewed with disdain and mistrust. The Arroyo Blanco community presents those who view the immigrants as such, and how difficult it is to break down ignorance barriers to be accepted into it.
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
In the wildly popular Mexican film, Los olvidados (1950), Spanish director Luis Buñuel exposes the harsh realities of life in Mexico during the 1950’s. Luis Buñuel’s work on Los olvidados portrays a societal loss for all hope due to crime and violence as an infinitely vicious cycle, coupled with addressing the lack of reform for dilapidated living conditions throughout Mexico. In Los olvidados, Buñuel follows Pedro (Alfonso Mejía) a neglected bastard, and El Jaibo (Roberto Cobo) the leader of a gang of homeless children loitering in vacant lots. For Pedro, and the rest of the cast, a series of unfortunate outcomes have been strung together though common ignorance and a lack of self-control. Luis Buñuel’s use of focal length, editing, and dialogue
In the altar’s center is “a plaster image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, quarter-life size, its brown Indian face staring down on the woman” (Paredes 23). The implication of the stare is of criticism as the Virgin, symbolic of an ideal Mexican womanhood, looks down on Marcela, whose Anglo features starkly contrast with the Virgin’s, and whose actions are in opposition to the values that she represents. This carefully constructed scene is meaningful. Marcela’s lifeless body lies between the bed and the altar, and opposite to the altar is Marcela’s shrine dedicated to Hollywood movie stars. These are the visual images of the opposing forces that characterize the Mexican-American struggle for resistance against American cultural hegemony.
Octavio Paz, a Mexican poet and essayist, is one of the many philosophers with a written piece regarding his understanding of Lo Mexicano. Paz’s “Sons of La Malinche” was first published in the Labyrinth of Solitude in 1950 and is a rather grim interpretation of the Mexican character, however, it captures the crisis of identity that Mexico was burdened with after the conquest. Paz uses the Spanish term “chingar,” (when literally translated means “to screw, to violate”) and its associated phrases to understand the conquest and the effect
In the poem “To live in the Borderlands means you”, the borderlands become a place of change, such as changing from just one culture or race into a diverse culture or race and not-belonging. (Singh, A., & Schmidt, P. 2000). The poem describes how the author’s own background ethnicity people, mixicanas, identifies people like her, chicanas, as “split or mixture that means to betray your word and they deny “Anlo inside you.” (Anzaldua, F. 1987). The poem describes that the borderland is a place of contradiction, such as of home not being a home.