Conclusion!

I really enjoyed almost all the text we had to read for this class. Some of them were very quick to read, like No se lo tragó la tierra, women hollering creek, and and a body to remember with, each chapter in those books had so much to say and was so artistically and well written. I really have to say reading Cisneros' book has inspired me to write. I had started one 2 years ago but was always stopped because i didn't like the chronological order or I was just blocked in a spot and couldn't continue. I really like how authors like Cisneros, Carmen Rodriquez and Rivera play with the order and sometimes you don't know if the same protagonist follows in all chapters or when exactly something happened. 

I connected with the latino literature as much as with the chicano literature and in some cases their stories were so similar to mine. I have to say that I even connected and have similar feelings as Martí does even though José Marti wrote Escenas norteamericanas in the 1880s. I think we didn't spend enough time on Martí and I think the majority of  my classmates didn't enjoy or value his works because it was in Spanish. 

We had a pretty good selection of books to read for this class, and like I have mentioned some of them were really inspiring for me, and touching.

And a Body to remember with

Wow Wow! I'm really enjoying Rodriguez' book even though  the stories are very painful. Its a very quick read, but with in an hour, Rodriguez takes us through 4 different emotional roller coasters. It's like having all your body waxed in 5 min. Before you have the time to think how much waxing your right leg hurt, someone else is waxing your bikini or something! It's like ouch.... ouch... ouch! Each story in this book is precious and amazing, and even though the book is pretty small and quick to read, it reveals soooo much. The stories touch upon, exile, immigration, race, family, gender, class, identity, nationality, geography, torture and gendered torture, public and private sphere... we could spend a class or two talking about each chapter. 

Some of the main symbolic things that stand out in this book are body and  communication. 

I think the body represents the home country, feeling of pain and suffering, and finding one's identity.  

From the beginning of the book we see how Estela uses, letters and the phone to communicate with her loved ones back in Chile...then there are times that she can not communicate what she feels, and just cries, because no one would understand her. In other chaptersthe protagonists communicate with comadre, or Abuelita Flor, who have passed away... lost friends...  by placing them in their heart or mind and talking to them, because they're the ones who would understand them, but are not present. 

One of my favorite examples of failure of communication is on page 83, in the chapter "trespass", where the protagonist is telling her dream to Luis (the cute guy)

"I was in a place where there were dozens of phones all over the place,  on the walls, the tables, the floor, everywhere. I went from one telephone to the next saying hello, hello, but all the phones were either dead, didn't have a tone, or had their cables cut."

I think this represents how there is no possibility of a dialogue, to talk about their lives, or communicate with people, because of fear and distrust that the dictatorship has created. They do not have  a voice and have to mute their personal opinion. 

and a body to remember

I'm absolutely loving Carmen Rodriguez' book. I feel as if she's telling my story. I want to give this to my mom after i'm finished reading it, because Estela is so much like my mom. I felt like reading or finding a deleted file in my hard drive, or memory card. I call the first few years after immigration the dark ages, and I had completely erased those years from my history. So reading this book was like finding old baby pictures or recordings in a box hidden in the basement. What's cool about it is that it's not just any kind of immigration. It's immigration to Vancouver, Canada in August the same month that I arrived, the same age as Estela's older daughter. We both fled out country because of political issues back at home. It was so funny to read how Estela imagined Canada looking at National Geographic pictures. I used to know that Canada has greezly bears and that the  Niagara falls, the biggest fall in the world is in Canada through a board game i had, so the image of the fall and bears kept coming in my head. 

My mother found work first and had a higher salary than my dad which was very weird at first.  My parent's relationship has changed ever since then, and my mother has a lot more to say when it comes to family decision making. One thing I've noticed about immigrant women who used to be oppressed in their home company, is that they become superwomen when they move to countries with more freedom and opportunities, because they really appreciate all the freedom they get. They study and work really hard. I could really relate to the little girls, because I felt very odd having black hair in junior high, in west vancouver. It might've been different if I had gone to high school in another neighborhood. It made me laugh how the family found certain things strange when they moved here, like electrical stoves, the smell of french fries and hamburger everywhere... 

It took me years to get used to the taste of food here, everything was so tasteless, the fruits tasted like water, and the meat and the rice was so strange. I used to think that the food was tasteless because it was made on an electrical stove! I hated Canada so much. As I turned 16 my life changed a lot and I found myself and my identity, and now I don't think that Canada is the best country one could live in. Thank you Jon for familiarizing us with cool books :)

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent

I'm enjoying Julia Alvarez's book. I can relate to it a lot. One thing that stands out to me in this book is "el juego de las palabras". This is enhance in chapters specially dedicated to Yolanda/Joe/ Yo since she's a poet/writer/not. I like he play with the Slash thing as well. I thing this is significant when you she says maybe "I should get rid of the slashes between mind, heart/soul, and just right Yo" looking at the body as a whole, as an interlinked system. Mind, heart, body all make Yo. It's also interesting how one person can have different nicknames, ones that they like and ones that they dislike and ones that one wishes to be called but is never called, in Yolanda's case "sky".

I was filled with rage when the grandpa paid more attention to the little born baby boy and no attention to his grand daughter. I can so relate to that, because I know a lot of traditional conservative family friends that wish all the best careers for the little boys and a good husband (with money) for the girls. I have feel Sofia’s pain and I get so mad a the father, even though I don’t dislike him, cause it’s not his fault that he’s is the way he is. It has to do with the way he has been brought up and the principles they were thought as a young boy. I admire Sofia for leaving the house and not obeying his father’s rules. Sofia didn’t try to change her father and she accepts him as the way he is, and understands why he was made at her. She still respects him and loves him and tries to regain his love. However the father doesn’t try to rebuild his relationship with his daughter and has not accepted her as she is.