“New people remained ignorant […and] blind not only to the dangers the place still presented but to the shared responsibilities it continued habitation demanded,” writes Joan Didion (321). In Didion’s nonfiction book Where I Was From she describes the historical and cultural privileges through her family and her own experiences that they had encountered in California. She focuses on how newborn generation of Californians thinks life is “supposed to be easy” (312). Furthermore, Didion mentions how new people are irresponsible towards the community they live in and additionally describes how they are ignorant towards California’s history. Moreover, in her nonfiction book Didion uses William Faulkner’s story, “Golden Land” as an example, which …show more content…
Martin in his early life decides how to assist the community while fulfilling his dreams. Moreover, I understand the issue that Didion expresses her experiences towards Ira Ewing’s children where these kids do not feel responsible and live their life in ignorance. I did not grow up with a luxurious lifestyle, in other words, like Steve Martin; a luxurious life is not necessary to be successful. Martin is successful and does not give up on his dreams through his hard work and motivation. Similarly, I had to build my future by putting the effort into my education and work as a part-time employee to support myself. So why should anyone care about the experiences that Steve Martin faced in his early life? The hard work that Martin applies in his early life teaches us to be alert to the dangers of an easy life and how to take responsibility towards the society we share. Unlike, Ira Ewing’s children are irresponsible and negligent towards their community where these children have not experienced the hardship. In compression, Martin grows up to be a successful and famous
The tone of Whitewashed Adobe delivers an ethnic and cultural history of Los Angeles. The author, William Deverell, indicates “Los Angeles has been the city of the future for a long time.” The book takes a revealing and harsh look at prejudice, political power and control in the early vision of 19th century Los Angeles and its surrounding communities. Deverell’s main interest is the economically, culturally and politically powerful Anglos and their view of ethnicity and race that enabled them to distance themselves from the Mexican people. Whitewashed Adobe’s six chapters illuminate how these men “appropriated, absorbed, and occasionally obliterated” Mexican sites and history in going forth with their vision for Los Angeles.
As well as how Martin suffers from his own dilemma and fears that his wife might cause to his social life and children due to her life consuming addiction.
The protagonist, Martin is supportive, old-fashioned, and a hard worker. Firstly, Martin is supportive, “It was hard to believe that your own son was not like you wanted him to be, but Martin thought sadly you couldn’t make him see, if he didn’t feel that way…” (200). Despite his wish for David to grow up and live on a farm, he somewhat accepts David’s wishes with a strong effort and is supportive of David. Secondly, Martin is old-fashioned, “Martin listened with sick wonder to this stranger who had been his son. The city… It’s there the days are the same.” (197). Martin reveals his feelings toward the city and his preference of the farm life rather than the city life. Thirdly, Martin is hard working, “The plowed land was here before us and it will last after us and our hands should be proud to work in it.” (194). Martin works hard like any other farmer, maintaining the farm and livestock everyday despite his old age. Therefore, the protagonist Martin is supportive, old-fashioned, and hard
In the book Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina, education, and the lack there of, plays one of the largest roles in the character's lives. At this time in West Virginia, where the book is set, many children had to leave school and actually go into the coalmines, as Rondal Lloyd did, or work on the family farm. Racial ignorance is also a key element Giardina confronts in the novel. The characters, chief and secondary, equally cultural and racially bland, pass on their beliefs and therefore help to maintain the continuous circle of inequality that carries on even today. Political knowledge, at least on the national and state level, is also lacking within the little town of Annadel. With this knowledge coupled with her own experiences from growing up as an immigrants daughter in the same coalfields as her novels characters, Denise Giardina tries to explain the function of education and ignorance in not only the coalfields of West Virginia, but throughout the entire world.
---. "Soap and Water." Imagining America Stories from the Promised Land. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. 8th ed. New York: Peresea Books, 1991. 105-110.
California represents is not as easy to attain as they once thought. The characters in The Day of the
Moving from the unpleasant life in the old country to America is a glorious moment for an immigrant family that is highlighted and told by many personal accounts over the course of history. Many people write about the long boat ride, seeing The Statue of Liberty and the “golden” lined streets of New York City and how it brought them hope and comfort that they too could be successful in American and make it their home. Few authors tend to highlight the social and political developments that they encountered in the new world and how it affected people’s identity and the community that they lived in. Authors from the literature that we read in class highlight these developments in the world around them, more particularly the struggles of assimilating
Gregory, James N. American exodus: the Dust Bowl migration and Okie culture in California.
The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.
Baldwin, James. ?Strange in the Village.? Inventing America: Readings in Identity and Culture. Ed. Gabriella Ibieta and Miles Orvell. New York: St. Martins, 196. 126-35.
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
Steltzer, Ulli, “The New Americans: Immigrant Life in Southern California.” Kiniry and Rose 346-347. Print.
After the end of World War I in 1919, a group of thirty Japanese settled in San Joaquin Valley, California making their ethnic community in Cortez. Despite the Alien Land Law of 1913, which prevented Asians from purchasing land or leasing it for more than three years, most of the families were able to establish fruit orchards in large land areas. It is this community that the author of the book conducted her research.
“Freedom was in the very air Californians breathed, for the country offered a unique and seductive drought of liberty. People were free from censure, from Eastern restrictions, from societal expectations.”1
Second chances may or may not always bring about great opportunities. Cándidó, an illegal immigrant with a strong sense of the faultless lifestyle he constantly lusts for, gives migrating with his wife to the freedom land another chance. Because the couple are so unsatisfied and unsure about the minimal opportunities that Mexico once offered them, Cándidó and América anticipate that their new “home” in the states will provide “a house, a yard, maybe a TV and a car too,” (Boyle 29). These materialistic things may seem to be such basic, yet selfish resources, but to Cándidó and his wife, they are a way for the refugees to feel like they belong within such a pressured society.