Los Angeles is a city that resonates with glamour and opportunity. Its attraction as the place to live in is everlasting. It attracts immigrants such as from China, Korea, and Mexico. In fact, according to one of the authors of the assigned readings, Ray Bradbury, Little Tokyo in Los Angeles is the “largest Japanese community outside Japan.” Los Angeles offers the dream of what most people yearn for. Another author from the readings, Wanda Coleman expresses her amazement with Los Angeles in her excerpt “L.A. Love Cry” (1996). She uses the simile of fast food to describe the lovely city, “Loving you is to love fast food.” (21) Coleman seems really to enjoy living in Los Angeles as she continues, “to eat with one hand while maneuvering steering wheel with the other, working that arm rest” (21). Los Angeles does not only offer the good life and multiculturalism, but it is also the city of hope.
People come to Los Angeles in hope to get a better life. Most aspiring actors believe that by going to Los Angeles, they definitely can get into the Hollywood. However, in reality only a small portion of people who are successfully landed a job in Hollywood. While some people move to Los Angeles in hope to get a better job, others hope they can see a more beautiful-looking city. However, the readings from the class contradict this image and instead suggest that the reality of life in LA is not the city of Hope.
Media and word of mouth are the key roles in sending message to society. They create the delusion image of Los Angeles that people are drooling for. Because of some difficulties to enter Los Angeles that includes travelling documents, financial and time problems, people most of the time learn about Los Angeles from the things they read,...
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...similar with Baca that emphasizes that there are a lot of opportunities in California, but those opportunities are not for everyone.
In this short interview with Betye Saar, it depicts the gay rights in the Los Angeles are still disputed. California was the first state that legalized gay marriage. One of the hopes people move to Los Angeles is to have a better life that includes the human rights. Although the gay rights have already been established in Los Angeles, but in reality they are still outcast by the society. This shows another side of Los Angeles that people are not only struggling in getting jobs, but also human rights. The city of Angels fails to give hope to its citizens. The disappointment that most of the authors in the readings experience has leaded some extreme action, such as riot in Nathanael West’s the Day of the Locust, and this reading as well.
In Barbara Berlund’s Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, Berlund explains how San Francisco grew from a young settlement which grew rapidly thanks to in part of the California Gold Rush which took place in 1949. Of course with the growing of this small settlement came it’s conflicts and how it rised to where it stands present day. A primary factor which helped San Francisco flourish a ton was the influence from those who had power and chose what would happen throughout the city, for example the Big 4. Those who were wealthy did not make this city what it is today without the help of people who made up the middle class as well. Every establishment within this city set the social order as to how the inhabitants of San Francisco would go about their life in society.
Several works we have read thus far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" all pass judgement on the denizens of the middle-class and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories are told from different viewpoints.
Throughout the early 1900s an American immigrant experience was subject to society’s opinion and the nation’s policies. Various ethnicities endured the harsh reality that was American culture while familiarizing themselves with their families. Immigration thrived off the strength and pride demonstrated by their neighborhoods. Notions of race, cultural adaptations and neighborhood represented the ways by which human being were assessed. In a careful interpretation of Mary Lui’s “The Chinatown Trunk Mystery” and Michael Innis-Jimenez’s “Steel Barrio”, I will trace the importance of a neighborhood in the immigrant experience explaining the way in which neighborhoods were created, how these lines were crossed and notions of race factored into separating these neighborhoods.
"Love in L.A.," written by Dagoberto Gilb, is a story full of irony and multiple themes. The story is set in Hollywood during the summer time. Written in third person objective, "Love in L.A." guides the reader along through the story as opposed to an omniscient point of view.
Los Angeles is a place with a dynamic history. It has grown to be one of the most diverse cities in the world as a whole. Despite the diversity for which it is known for, the city has always had a striving conflict due to racial and class tension. The social stratification of its past continues to take its toll as dividing lines persist in contemporary Los Angeles. Furthermore, these dividing lines redefine place in Los Angeles, whether geographically or personally, to be subject to race and class. Fluidity has become evident recently however it is more common for the identity of people to be fixed in society. Through the novel Southland, by Nina Revoyr, and various means of academic sources, one is further able to explore the subject of race, place, and reinvention in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles, California is often seen as the city of dreams. Hollywood paints the picture of Los Angeles as a place of endless possibilities. Los Angeles is also thought as the city where dreamers can come with nothing in their pocket and become an over night success story. Many Americans and immigrants come to Los Angeles with the same dream of success. In The Tattooed Soldier Tobar describes how this fictionalized “American dream” version of the Los Angeles affects immigrants. In the novel Tobar followed two Guatemalan immigrants Antonio and Longeria who live very different lifestyles in their home country and in America. Los Angeles seemed to be the land of dreams and promise to both characters, however; Los Angeles becomes a place of harsh reality for Antonio and Longeria. In the novel we watch how Antonio and Longeria adjust to the struggles of being immigrants in Los Angeles, , and what makes man a man.
... who settled on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where we could see packs of books telling the stories and experiences of past immigrants. I felt the rush and the excitement that characterize the city, but I also couldn’t get enough of the multiple cultures in New York. One would spend days and weeks in the “City that Never Sleeps” but still, it would take many more to truly experience every aspect of it or understand how the diverse ethnicities were able to survive and succeed there.
the beginning the text has an exciting tone since the authors describe the overwhelming emotions of individuals as well as the celebrations that took place after the law allowing same sex marriage was approved. By starting the article in this manner the writers are trying to provoke feelings of excitement from their readers in order to make them think that this event is a positive aspect of our society. Also, by mentioning the gay movement’s multiple efforts over the past “forty-two years to ensure the marital as well as civil rights of homosexuals” (Virtanen, Hill, and Zraick 1), the writers motivate their audience to be sympathetic towards these individuals. Moreover, the authors try to make people become more suppo...
New York City’s population is a little over 8.3 million people. 8.3 million people are spread out among five boroughs and each have their own set routine. Each one of those 8.3 million see New York in a different way becuase “You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it” (“City Limits” 4). Some people are like Colson Whitehead who “was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else” (“City Limits” 3). Others may have “moved here a couple years ago for a job. Maybe [they] came here for school” (“City Limits” 3). Different reasons have brought these people together. They are grouped as New Yorkers, but many times, living in New York is their only bond. With on going changes and never ending commotion, it is hard to define New York and its inhabitants in simple terms.
Greenberg, Brad A. "Dreams Fulfilled for New Citizens." San Gabriel Valley Tribune. California. 15 Apr. 2006.
Cheech Marin’s film, Born in East L.A., spotlights many key issues brought upon mainly by immigration. This comedic production hits the hearts to many because while it may be humorous, it is also a reality to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and so it hits close to home to many. Immigration is the main topic of this motion picture, but I want to focus on one subdivision of it only; language. The linguistic barriers in between a border is evident in the movie and especially a reality in our world.
Finding “more pain in a pop song”, for instance, than “all of Cambodia”, one of the poorest nations in the world, the speaker attacks the city’s privileged residents for being too consumed by their own lifestyles to concern themselves with issues outside of their first-world bubble (27). In fact, their obsession with “love” for the city comes “before any pain” even “Chernobyl, a mass murder”, thus implying that those in Los Angeles turn a blind eye to any negativity that could potentially disrupt their bliss lifestyle, built entirely on forgery
1. Considering my mother’s family was always residents of the state of California, my father’s side was the only part of my family to migrate to the state, although not from a different country. This began when my father Anthony Velasco traveled from Chicago, Illinois, with my grandparents and his siblings. My father came from a family of 8 children, so my grandparents lived a very frugal lifestyle. They had exactly what they needed to get by, but struggled at times to make ends meet. Living expenses were through the roof, and they were unable to experience the finer things in life. At the time, my grandfather’s job could not simply afford the expenses that came along with their large family, so my grandfather decided to search for a better employment opportunity. Fortunately, he landed a job in downtown Los Angeles, working for a newspaper company. My father’s experience of traveling to the state of California greatly correlates with the immigration wave we read about during our course for the reason that his father came seeking the “California Dream” of obtaining land and wealth.
Upon arrival into the jungle of vast buildings, the first thing noticed is the mobbed streets filled with taxi cabs and cars going to and fro in numerous directions, with the scent of exhaust surfing through the air. As you progress deeper into the inner city and exit your vehicle, the aroma of the many restaurants passes through your nostrils and gives you a craving for a ?NY Hot Dog? sold by the street venders on the corner calling out your name. As you continue your journey you are passed by the ongoing flow of pedestrians talking on their cell phones and drinking a Starbucks while enjoying the city. The constant commotion of conversing voices rage up and down the streets as someone calls for a fast taxi. A mixed sound of various music styles all band together to form one wild tune.
This where the “disaster”part kicks in. People drop their lives to find out that the California Dream can be fake, including the people they meet through the experience. For example, Eco declares that, “Disneyland tells us that technology can give us more reality than nature can” (586). All the technology thetis ran by California can make the dreamer believe that Hollywood can give them much more than their personal surroundings can. The sad part about it is that there is no one that can them the truth. The dreamer has to pretty much experience it themselves in order to believe that fake side of the California Dream. The California Dream is not one hundred percent fake. It just has many sides that no one will see coming and that no one brings up. People are brainwashed into thinking it can be the greatest thing in the world and that it’s better than all the other dreams people can attain. The author also states, “What is falsified is our will to buy, which we take as real, and in the sense Disneyland is really the quintessence of consumer ideology” (586). A dreamer can drop everything without knowing if they can make it in California. Maybe they have been saving up and use that money for a down payment on an apartment in Los Angeles hoping they can soon get a job. Although California’s wage is higher than most states, it is not a cheap place to live in. It sets up the dreamer for failure. They can’t seem to get a