Mericans By Sandra Cisneros Summary

In her essay, “Spanglish Spoken Here”, Jamie Castro talks about the entry and the usage of Spanglish in American society. Firstly, he illustrates a few examples of Spanglish usage in American daily life. Then, he explained about Spanglish becoming an important part of American life. Spanglish actually was brought into Anglo homes and families through children and television shows. This language also has variety of forms, which varies from Southern California to the Cuban American divers.

After immigrating many assimilate into their new environments. In Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, it exemplifies the struggle of Yolanda, the third oldest Garcia sister, as she searches for a personal identity while feeling trapped between her cultural identity and her new Americanized self. Yolanda strived to fit into American culture, she was able to find a way to fit in, through the English language, writing poems. In her continued desire to fit in, Yolanda became stuck between her cultural identity and her new assimilated self. Failing to find a sense of belonging in the United States as Yolanda is unable to let go of her past.

People thrust into environments where they know they will stand out. In Julia Alvarez’s bildungsroman novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1992), Junot Diaz’s short story “Ysrael” (1996), and Morris Louis’s painting Alpha-Pi (1960), all talk about the idea of trespassing and intruding into unknown territory. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents discusses issues pertaining to an immigrant family who recently migrates from the Dominican Republic. The Garcia family struggles to assimilate to the American culture and encounters difficulty raising their young daughters in a foreign environment. In Junot Diaz’s “Ysrael,” a boy with a damaged face is harassed and assaulted by his peers.

In the texts, "In Response to Executive Order 9066" by Dwight Okita and "Mericans" by Sandra Cisneros, a topic of American identity and perception of identity is shared. Both texts take a brief look at the lives, characteristics, and feelings of young girls living a bicultural life. In Cisnero's story, the girl seems caught between her two different cultures, and she struggles to connect with her Mexican heritage. In Okita's poem, the girl has a clear sense of her identity and place as an American. Culture is experienced and interpreted differently by each individual and each group of people.

In Julia Alvarez’s Antojos, is about a young Dominican American women named Yolanda who is visiting her homeland and family in search of her antojos or cravings which leads her to not only cultural confrontation between American and Dominican ways but being able to reconnect with her native identity. Yolanda was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in America. She travels back to her homeland for the first time in seven years with a possibility of staying permanently and “…live here on her own terms” (Alvarez 1304). Although her extended family welcomes her, her aunts and cousins openly criticizes her appearance and American ways, as she silently critiques theirs. Yolanda has difficultly speaking Spanish, stumbling over her words and

One of the area of conflict that rose in the book involves the usage of the English language in relation of the family’s native language, Spanish. As a Mexican-American raised in the States the exhibition of the English language, whether the use of the tongue is fluent or not, cause a strain in the Mexican culture as the culture takes in consideration of their romance and richness of history in their native tongue (Rothman 204). Language represent the supporting backbone of a person as the progress in life as the ability to communicate without misunderstands, however a person can cause the loss connection to the past romance of the culture and art of cultivation that brings the language to lifes from their inabilities to comprehend the ability/asset to its fullest potential (Rothman 204). To fully understand the true meaning behind a spoken chain of words can be understood by the method of trying to first comprehend the cultivation of the word and the definition behind them. Cisneros embeds the use of Spanish in fragments depicting a sense of reality within a fictional novel, Caramelo, as well with the use of interchangeable dialogues with spanish phrase to express the illustration of Celaya’s family and the culture in which is translate in of importance of pride.

Situated near the U.S.-Mexico border during the early twentieth century is the fictional setting of Fort Jones, the outskirts of which is where Americo Paredes’ short story “Macaria’s Daughter” takes place. Emblematic of the disappropriation of Mexican land, as well as the increased marginalization of the Mexican people, the overbearing presence of Fort Jones reveals the struggle for preservation that characterizes the Mexican-American community of the story. “Macaria’s Daughter” is the tragic account of what happens in a small community when the upholding of Mexican values and institutions, and opposition to Anglo-American culture, become more important than a young woman’s life. In this essay, I will argue that “Macaria’s Daughter” is a text

The article “true colors” by Christine Granados relates to the clash between the thoughts of the author and her mother. In the article, Granados shows ups and downs of diversity between a mother and a daughter. In the article Granados felt that she is typical American and she wanted her life to be like an American T. V. show. She was attracted towards American lifestyle, but on the other hand, her mother used to like to follow Mexican culture.

Rodriguez would speak English in school because to him it was a “public language”, while Spanish was a “private language” (72). Rodriguez

He supports this argument by telling his own story of being forced to learn English by the bilingual education system. The experience he had learning English made him experience great embarrassment, sadness, and change. Rodriguez concludes his experience by discussing how English had changed his personal life at home: “We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close;no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.” By learning English, Rodriguez’s family is finally able to integrate into society without language barriers.

“So many words were still unknown that when the butcher and the lady at the drugstore said something to me, exotic polysyllabic sounds would bloom in the midst of their sentences. Often, the speech of people in public seemed to be very loud, booming with confidence. The man behind the counter would literally ask, ‘What can I do for you?’ But by being firm and so clear, the sound of his voice said that he was a gringo; he belonged in the public society”(12). Rodriguez describes the way English sounds to him creating an image that the language was very complex to in his perspective.

Written works about American Identity are a very common theme amongst writers, including poet Dwight Okita and short-story writer Sandra Cisneros. Dwight Okita is famous for her poem “In Response to Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers,” in which the theme of American identity is portrayed through a 14-year-old girl. In a similar way, Sandra Cisneros’s short story is told by a young girl of Mexican heritage who prefers American culture—in sharp contrast to her deep-rooted Mexican grandmother. Although the overall theme of the two texts is “American Identity,” both Okita's poem and Cisneros's short story delve deeper and portray that cultural heritage and physical appearances do not determine what it

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.

Gloria is using Spanish and English, we could also call it Spanglish, within these sentences, which is a mixture of English and Spanish. She is switching between the two explaining how Latina and Chicana’s speak Spanish and English to communicate in different ways. The languages that people speak are different to everyone even if they are speaking the same language. Language is a part of how someone identifies

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