In the novels, We The Animals by Justin Torres and Soledad by Angie Cruz the narrators’ relationship to men is influenced by the behavior and interactions with their families. The role that men play in the life of the unnamed narrator in We The Animals is based around his coming to terms with his sexuality, and how his sexuality makes him an outsider within his family. Likewise, in the novel Soledad, the titular character’s perception of men is shaped by not only her family, but also Dominican culture. Similarly, Soledad like the narrator from We The Animals is also an outsider in her family because she is distant and she is pursing higher education.
The narrator from We The Animals is shown a gay, pedophilic pornographic film at a young age
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The men she ignores are the men from Washington Heights: “…when potbellied, sockless men and pubescent homeboys call me mami, as if I’ll give them the time of day if they stare at me long enough, I know I must keep moving forward” (Cruz 3). The men described don’t accurately portray Dominican male culture, but these are the men that Soledad describes when she first arrives home, and they are the men that she does not want to interact or end up with. The men in Soledad’s family get taken care of by women (Victor and her grandfather), beat their wives (Manolo), or leave their wives (Raful). Soledad’s description of the men from page 3 can then be interpreted as her internalizing and subjecting the behavior of the men from her life onto the neighborhood men from Washington Heights. “I can’t imagine having children. I can’t even imagine having a relationship. Caramel says it’s because I’m always falling for artists. That’s my biggest mistake. She also thinks that I have problems with men who remind me of the men in my family. Maybe you’re afraid that you will end up like your mother” (Cruz 63) is the instance in which Soledad really opens up about her feelings in regard to the relationship she has with men. She willingly falls for artists and aims to avoid men who remind her of the men in her family. Because Soledad has problems with men who remind her of her family, it is safe to say that she does not want to repeat the cycle that she has escaped. The role that her family plays in this situation is that they have brought her back home when she was determined to stay
Diaz was not only passing through these struggles in the Dominican Republic, he also got to experience the affairs his father had with another women and how it affected his mother. In his book,
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the reader follows the story of Oscar de Leon as told by his college roommate, Yunior. Although the novel is named after Oscar and depicts his life, the information given tells more about Yunior than Oscar. In many ways, however, Oscar serves as a foil to Yunior, showing the hardships of achieving masculinity in Dominican culture. While, to the public, Yunior is the typical masculine, sexually-driven posterchild of Dominican culture, so much of him is shaped by his relationship with Oscar. In some aspects, Oscar was able to mirror Yunior’s struggles, especially when it came to girls and masculinity, but he is also able to illuminate how hard Yunior struggled to fit in by being more true
The children are angry at their father because he does not spend time with them, so they constantly tell Talia to leave him. “Talia is enacting more than one image of femininity. On the one hand, she feels bound by the requirement of ranchera or Ticuani migrant femininity that a woman stay with her husband even when unhappy” (450). Talia herself has noticed that Mexican women tend to suffer a lot when it comes to marriage because of ranchera femininity. She talks about what her Puerto Rican friend who says, “You can be screwed in life chingada, but there you are, see?’
In Latino culture, machismo behavior is defined by men that see inferiority in people and expect obedience from them (mostly non-male-bodied individuals). This is illustrated when Blanca invites the pastor and Claudia, a woman from church, to dinner despite Julio’s distaste for it. As a result, Julio snaps at Blanca after her persistent preaching of a church where she is indirectly disrespected and “‘the women are treated as if they were just there to glorify their husbands, their children, and their pastor’” (Quiñonez, 130). Throughout the novel, Blanca is presented as a pious girl, as if she has not changed from the young schoolgirl that Julio fell in love with when he was young.
Not only does Diaz write novels and short stories, but he also takes action towards exposing the problems that Dominican people especially women face everyday. There might be some people who consider Diaz to be an Antifeminist and also a disgrace to his country, the Dominican Republic, but the only thing that Diaz is doing with his writing is exposing the reality of what its meant to be an immigrate from another country and how machismo affects Feminism in Latin cultures. Diaz shows his feminism by exposing machismo and what women in Latin cultures deal with everyday. Machismo is a term used to describe the dominant male behavior in Latin cultures. Machismo can also be describe as a man objectifying a women as a
In Bucknell University’s production of Marisol by Jose Rivera, one of the central themes is chaos and the effects of chaos. This theme of chaos is in part seen through the inconsistent timeline of the play. Chaos is also seen through the development of the main characters Marisol, June, and Lenny. Jose Rivera’s purpose in writing about chaos is to parallel the real life experiences of so many people before and even now that live the lives of his characters in Marisol. The chaos is present to give voice to the real people who lived in uncertainty, enduring the insane events of the play.
The Evolution of Chanda Although many people see people surrounded by AIDS as weak humans with loose morals and personality, there is another stand on AIDS. In Chanda 's Secret 's by Alan Stratton the unrelenting truth is revealed that everyone has a story, a situation, which matures the person or destroys them in a way that society try’s to categorize. Throughout the novel Chanda is the tool in which this is revealed through heart wrenching experiences and life lessons. Her strong compassion and convincing courage are unique quirks to her personality that show how she takes a stand in her AIDS infested community, as she changes the stereotype. .
Lola takes advantage of her deteriorating mother whose illness represents the declining hold of the norms over Lola. Since her mom “will have trouble lifting her arms over her head for the rest of her life,” Lola is no longer afraid of the “hitting” and grabbing “by the throat” (415,419). As a child of a “Old World Dominican Mother” Lola must be surrounded by traditional values and beliefs that she does not want to claim, so “as soon as she became sick” Lola says, “I saw my chance and I’m not going to pretend or apologize; I saw my chance and I eventually took it” (416). When taking the opportunity to distinguish herself from the typical “Dominican daughter” or ‘Dominican slave,” she takes a cultural norm like long hair and decides to impulsively change it (416). Lola enjoyed the “feeling in [her] blood, the rattle” that she got when she told Karen to “cut my hair” (418).
The abusive husband is Juan Pedro. Juan Pedro wants to take Cleofilas and move to Seguin, Texas and start a new life there. He can’t get a decent job and they live in a low-end home. He takes his frustration out on Cleofilas. He beats her, cheats on her, and yells at her for things that are not her fault.
“Excelsior”. It means taking all the negativity and using it as fuel to find the silver lining. In the movie Pat Solitano has many things wrong with him. Parts of him are broken and some parts are things that he has no control over. For the parts he has no control over I came up with 3 mental disorders.
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.
Yunior observes what his father does to his wife. He learns from his father which causes him to mistreat a woman by cheating. Yunior says, “All of Magda’s friends say I cheated because I was Dominican, that all us Dominican men are dogs and can’t be trusted. I doubt that I can speak for all Dominican men but I doubt they can either.
In the story, “The Myth of a Latin Woman” is about the author Judith Ortiz Cofer talking about her life and growing up as a Puerto Rican girl. She talks about the struggles she had to go through, like always being under heavy surveillance by her family. She would be under their watch because she was a girl and was expected to protect her family’s honor and to behave like in her family’s terms “proper senorita”. I agree that she was forced to mature fast just at her teenage years; a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe Cofer could never act her age.
Márquez ridicules traditional gender norms and the sociocultural pressures against men and women through repeatedly criticizing gender expectations held by both men and women in the novel. Márquez juxtaposes the role of men with that of women in Colombian society, writing that “brothers were brought up to be men” and “the girls had been reared to get married” (p.30). Contemporary readers may expect the sentence to read ‘the girls had been brought up to be women’ but Márquez wryly mocks Colombian values by challenging the perceptions of gender held by readers. Juxtaposition is utilised by the author to highlight the power imbalance between men and women in Colombian society, effectively satirizing gender roles. Additionally, Márquez shapes meaning in the sentence with diction through the utilisation of the word ‘brought up’ for men, and ‘reared’ for women, a word which is typically reserved for raising animals.
In “The Cask of Amontillado” there are two characters who show strong character traits. Each character has his own way of showing these traits. Montresor shows his through how he deals with Fortunato’s insults. Fortunato shows his through how easily Montresor manipulates him. Throughout the story Montresor and Fortunato show that they are both very clever, but one of them becomes far more clever than the other.