Relationships In Wildwood

Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World is a memoir by Catalina de Erauso detailing her experiences during the early 1600’s in South America and Spain. She was born in 1585 into a well off Basque family and her parents were native-born residents of San Sebastian Spain. This book is one of the earliest known autobiographies by a woman and details the events that took places when Catalina escaped a Basque convent dressed as a man. During this time she served as soldier in the Spanish army, traveling to Peru and Chile, and even becoming a gambler. Being that my major falls under sociology, I will be looking at themes surrounding the constraints of females in Spanish society in the 1600’s and how this affects Catalina.

This section on gender features a passage from the Honduran human rights activist, Elvia Alvarado titled, “Childhood to Motherhood.” Throughout the passage, Alvarado retells her experiences as a woman growing up and having to deal with a violent, alcoholic father, an absentee mother, and the constant repression of her womanhood by Honduran society. All the while, her life experiences reflect on topics such as class, machismo, and femininity.

Numerous accounts of families affected by oppressive dictatorships exist all around the world. Julia Alvarez, an author whose father was involved in a resistance group to such a regime, is a prime example of one of those stories. After leaving her childhood home of the Dominican Republic, Alvarez struggled to adapt her lifestyle to match that of an average American. During this time period, Alvarez recalled her experience under an authoritarian government and combined it with her impressive storytelling skills to create a fictional documentation of another family just like her’s. Influenced by her father’s involvement in a Dominican rebel group, Julia Alvarez drew from her vivid imagination and

In the Dominican Republic, General Rafael Trujillo 's dictatorship is being judged within the eyes of the four Maribal sisters. In the story "In the Time of the butterflies" by Julia Alvarez the four sisters that are all strikingly different, are contemplating on whether to follow along with the anti- Trujillo movement. Minerva being the most dominant one out of all the sisters, is first to follow through against Trujillo. Alvarez involves feminism, rhetorical and literary devises, and portrayed various themes in her novel. Along with showing the strong relationship, and the differences between the four sisters, they showed us readers the true meaning of family. The sisters were best known as "Las mariposas" that means butterflies. Trujillo’s

Alvarez wrote her novels knowing they may wreak havoc on her family members who were still in the dominican republic and maybe her parents and sisters.In paragraph 29 and 30 it talks about the last novel she wrote about the island and how her mother thought about it ,”I don't care what happens to us i'm so proud of you ,” her mother says ,alvarez wrote the novel at the risk of her family but her mother and her new the story had to be told and the things the people had to go through

The fact that Anzaldúa developed faster than is deemed normal the first struggle in forming her identity. This caused her to alienate herself since her mother asked her to keep a part of herself hidden from the world by binding her and making sure no one found out she menstruated ealy (Anzaldúa 1983, 221). This will later isolate her further but ultimately lead her to reflect on the racism that surrounds her. In addition, Anzaldúa’s identity also suffer because she denied her heritage and the traditions that with it. She mentions that she felt ashamed of her mother and her loud tendencies, it is an archetype that most Hispanic mothers are loud by nature, and the fact that her lunches, or “lonches”, consisted

American history is built on affairs regarding freedom and equality, but negative issues thought to be conquered in the past have also become present day problems. When confronting controversial social, economic, and political topics in America today, the line between fact and opinion blurs. People across the country develop their own views on national issues, based only on personal experience and what the media tells them. Whether it be intention or ignorance, Americans are not supplied with enough information to accurately confront the major, national problems that lie just inside this country’s borders. Americans are unaware of slavery and socioeconomic issues that exist around them, which in turn presents a concern when trying to combat

In Mexican American society , women are deemed inferior to men, evident in traditional family roles, the male is the head of the family who provides for the family , while the woman stays at home to look after the children she is expected to provide for her husband . In the third vignette of ‘The House on Mango Street’ titled ‘Boys and Girls’ the reader is informed of the division between men and women when Esperanza refers to herself and her sister Nenny , and her brothers, “They’ve got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can’t be seen talking to girls”. The male dominance begins at a very young age.

Everyday people are judging and being judged by others with unique criteria that we, as inhabitants of Earth deem necessary checkmarks to be met to afford and be afforded tokens of civility. In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “The Myth of the Latin Woman” the memoir is brimming with personal accounts of fetishiztation and discrimination the author experiences as a Latin woman that have vast influence on her life. Throughout the text Cofer conveys the significance of how deep the status “exotic” to describe Latina women is held inside the minds of people which the author alludes to on page 879, “I thought you Latin girls were supposed to mature early,” [1] after being given a sudden, non-consensual kiss at a dance by her date. The author expresses the cultural dissonance between

“That’s the problem with the world, too many people grow up.” – Walt Disney. Growing up quickly is a dream for many girls. They will make countless attempts in hopes of becoming a woman faster. In Sandra Cisneros’s, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza becomes one of those girls who spends all of their precious time trying to grow up quickly. Esperanza tries to wear high heels like a woman, tries to have a boyfriend like an older woman, and she tries to get a job like an adult. Esperanza’s longing to grow up quickly causes her to confront the reality of being an adult. Although Esperanza desperately wants to be an adult, she is not prepared for the responsibilities that accompany adulthood; she is unable to successfully make the transition

There are many examples of incidents happened because of cultural differences. Some of them are short, single events, while other follow a person or social group for decades. Professor Judith Cortiz Cofer describes the second example in her essay The Myth of the Latin Woman that was originally published in Glamour in 1992. The author focused on the stereotypical view of Latin women from the perspective of the personal experience as a Puerto Rican girl and woman in the USA. Cofer based her essay on examples from her own life and observations of the problem in a broader sense. It looks like her work targets auditory from different social classes because it explains to both sides (representatives of the mainstream and Latin cultures) their mistakes. Cofer did not use information from studies

Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother signifies a pivotal point in her writing style. Her earlier novels have some semblance of her personal life, but, in this novel, the protagonist Xuela does not share a common experience with that of the author’s life. The mother-obsessed protagonists of her earlier fiction are absent. Instead, we have a seventy year old half-Carib Dominican. The domineering presence of the maternal figure is eradicated and the chief motif of the novel revolves around the absence of the mother. The smothering maternal love that plays a significant role in character and identity forming has been put aside and the implications of the physical absence of the mother are taken as the essence of the novel for analysis. How the self is defined and identified in the absence of the mother explicates the plot of this fiction.The life of Xuela per se revolves around the central fact of the absence of the mother figure or a substitute to whom Xuela can rely for a mirror image which would eventually help her to form and affirm her identity.

In this story, the narrator has been lead to believe that she has no part in her community. Throughout her life, she has been isolated by her entire town even by those who she called family. As seen in the text when the narrator says “ It saddened my mother to have given birth to an item such as myself”().

Have you ever felt that your view of things change when you get older? Well, that’s how Jacqueline Woodson felt. As we grow and change, so do our perspectives on a variety of things that we experience in life. In the beginning, Woodson introduces that since she got older, her perspective of her once beloved home has changed as a central idea of the story. By observing how her character changes over the course of the plot, it seems evident that Woodson is trying to convey to the reader that a person’s view of things change as one gets older.

When I Was Puerto Rican is a memoir written by Esmeralda Santiago. She writes of her childhood life in Puerto Rico and how she lived in primordial conditions. Santiago paints a vivid picture of her early life which creates unforgettable memories of her childhood. The author talks about her life from her rural home in Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, and to her graduation in Harvard University. The memoir details the struggles and freedoms of a young woman in a new land.