American History Judith Ortiz Cofer

569 Words2 Pages

Diversity is a great thing, but when not everyone shares these ideas, it can become a massive problem. In American History by Judith Ortiz Cofer, the main character Elena faces the challenges of choosing between consoling her family about the death of John F. Kennedy and meeting the boy of her dreams while facing discrimination and guilt along the way. Elena has been affected by identity in many ways, such as being underrepresented because of ethnicity and contradicting values after John F. Kennedy's death. One aspect of identity that affects Elena is her ethnicity, making her feel or be underrepresented in society. This all emerges because in her school she is made fun of and denied opportunities because she is Latina, which a new white student in her grade doesn’t experience. For example, ‘“Didn’t you eat …show more content…

This contributes to the way that ethnicity affects her life, because her being Puerto-Rican causes kids to use important cuisine in her culture as an insult and something to be ashamed of. Another example is “Eugene was in honors classes for all his subjects; classes that were not open to me because English was not my first language, though I was a straight A student” (Ortiz Cofer 2). This way of sorting out who can be in honor and who can’t is a horrible way of doing things, especially when you have students like Elena who would most definitely benefit from these classes. Overall, this makes it much harder for Elena to learn and accomplish everything that she has the mind to do. Another important aspect of identity that affects Elena's life is values regarding the death of John F. Kennedy. In the story, Elena ends up having mixed views on whether she should feel worse about her friend's mom not accepting her or President Kennedy being assassinated. For example, ‘When I walked into our apartment, I found my mother sitting in front of the grainy picture on the television

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