Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Struggles of immigrant families
Julia alvarez woman's work
Struggles of immigrant families
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Struggles of immigrant families
A Mayonnaise Life “I had plenty of my own reasons to make a potential stepmother’s life impossible” (Alvarez 699). “Hold the Mayonnaise,” is an essay written by Julia Alvarez. Alvarez has also published a book of poetry and a novel. This is a story about a Latino woman that becomes the stepmother for two American girls. The stepmother greatly dislikes mayonnaise and has difficulty connecting with her two stepdaughters. Upon closer examination, there is an underlying argument from this text. When cultural differences and relationships collide, life can either become complicated or it can be embraced. This is justified by the fact that living in a new culture is intimidating, tension can arise in relationships from cultural differences, it …show more content…
“Hold the Mayonnaise,” begins with a Latino mother giving her two daughters advice. “If I die first and Papi ever gets remarried,” Mami used to tease when we were kids, “don’t you accept a new woman in my house. Make her life impossible, you hear?” (Alvarez 699). This small family of immigrants had just moved to Jamaica Queens, New York. Therefore, it only seemed natural that if their father ever remarried, their future stepmother would be American. The narrator includes her greatest fear associated with having a stepmother. “All I could think of was that she would make me eat mayonnaise, a food I identified with the Unites States and which I detested” (Alvarez). A stepmother is often stereotyped as an individual that is bossy, demanding, proud, arrogant, and selfish. The girl that has been nurtured on rice and beans dreads the idea of a stepmother, because it would mean her own dear mother would have died, and she would have to eat mayonnaise. It is more than just growing up on beans and rice. An American stepmother is culturally different and that idea intimidates them. They fear they will be conformed to the image of an American family, eating mayonnaise and doing that Americans do best. Foreigners can experience bewilderment and confusion when experiencing a new culture. The text supports this idea by providing the example of this immigrated family. Most Americans do not even think twice over eating mayonnaise. It …show more content…
Some people will fight against change. They want to go on living as they always have. Instead of assimilating, they stick to their old ways and traditions. Others draw themselves into their own quiet world. This was the case for the new stepmother. “Even now, my first response to a scowl is that old pulling away. My husband calls it “checking out”. I remember times early on in the marriage when the girls would be with us, and I’d get out of school and drive around doing errands, killing time, until my husband, their father would be leaving work. I am not proud of my fears, but I understand-as the lingo goes-where they come from” (Alvarez 700). The stepmother, in this story, has a very unique character. She is not bossy, arrogant, dominant, proud, or exhibiting any stereotypical characteristics associated with a stepmother. In essence, she is the exact opposite. She is trying hard to blend in with her family. Her fear instills in her the needs to drive around town for hours. Does she fear an awkward situation with her stepdaughters when their father is not around? She withdraws herself, pulling away from her fully-American girls. She knows what they are going through, and does not want to hurt them even more. Stepmother and stepdaughter relationships can be strained, and this additional cultural difference only worsens the situation. Instead of becoming better acquainted, the stepmother flees the scene, giving into her fear, even
Madeleine Thien’s “Simple Recipes” is a story of an immigrant family and their struggles to assimilate to a new culture. The story follows a father and daughter who prepare Malaysian food, with Malaysian customs in their Canadian home. While the father and daughter work at home, the mother and son do otherwise outside the home, assimilating themselves into Canadian culture. The story culminates in a violent beating to the son by his father with a bamboo stick, an Asian tool. The violent episode served as an attempt by the father to beat the culture back into him: “The bamboo drops silently. It rips the skin on my brothers back” (333) Violence plays a key role in the family dynamic and effects each and every character presented in the story
Throughout Asian American literature there is a struggle between Asian women and their Asian American daughters. This is the case in The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan and also in the short story "Waiting for Mr. Kim," written by Carol Roh-Spaulding. These two stories are very different, however they are similar in that they portray Asian women trying to get their American daughters to respect their Asian heritage. There are certain behaviors that Asian women are expected to have, and the mothers feel that their daughters should use these behaviors.
The story “Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros describes the lives of Mexicans in a Chicago neighborhood. She depicts the life that women endure as Latino wives through her portrayal of the protagonist, Cleofilas. For Cisneros being a Mexican-American has given her a chance to see life from two different cultures. In addition, Cisneros has written the story from a woman’s perspective, illustrating the types of conflicts many women face as Latino wives. This unique paradigm allows the reader to examine the events and characters using a feminist critical perspective.
of the native tongue is lost , certain holidays may not be celebrated the same , and American born generations feel that they might have lost their identity , making it hard to fit in either cultures . Was is significant about this book is the fact it’s like telling a story to someone about something that happened when they were kid . Anyone can relate because we all have stories from when we were kids . Alvarez presents this method of writing by making it so that it doesn’t feel like it’s a story about Latin Americans , when
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
Throughout Anzia Yezierska’s novel “Bread Givers,” the character Sara Smolinsky goes through an elliptical journey from a rebellious youth appalled by the individual limitations of her cultural heritage to her gradual acceptance of her inability to escape her ancestry. At first rejecting her Orthodox Eastern European Jewish culture, Sara views the world in terms of a sole American identity. As ...
To understand fully the implicit meaning and cultural challenges the film presents, a general knowledge of the film’s contents must be presented. The protagonist, Tita, suffers from typical Hispanic cultural oppression. The family rule, a common rule in this culture, was that the youngest daughter is to remain unwed for the duration of her mother’s life, and remain home to care for her. Mama Elena offers her daughter, Tita’s older sister Rosaura, to wed a man named Pedro, who is unknowingly in mutual love with Tita. Tita is forced to bake the cake for the wedding, which contains many tears that she cried during the process. Tita’s bitter tears cause all the wedding guests to become ill after consuming the cake, and Tita discovers she can influence others through her cooking. Throughout the film, Tita’s cooking plays an important role in all the events that transpire.
America was not everything the mothers had expected for their daughters. The mothers always wanted to give their daughters the feather to tell of their hardships, but they never could. They wanted to wait until the day that they could speak perfect American English. However, they never learned to speak their language, which prevented them from communicating with their daughters. All the mothers in The Joy Luck Club had so much hope for their daughters in America, but instead their lives ended up mirroring their mother’s life in China. All the relationships had many hardships because of miscommunication from their different cultures. As they grew older the children realized that their ...
...ed by the ancient symbol of fear, conveys the child's panic. The mother's approach is a source of terror for the child, written as if it is a horror movie, suspense created with the footsteps, the physical embodiment of fear, the doorknob turns. His terror as 'he tries to run' but 'her large hands hold him fast' is indicative of his powerless plight. The phrase, 'She loves him...' reiterates that this act signifies entrapment as there is no reciprocation of the ‘love’. It is ironic that her love is deemed 'the frightening fact'. Clearly this form of love will destroy his innocence, his freedom to think for himself, his ability to achieve emotional fulfilment. We sense the overpowering, suffocating nature of this form of love, but also the nature of American cultural imperialism, which is similarly stifling to the development of national identity and fulfilment.
The "awful grandmother" (Cisneros p.30) is an example of a person in the story living in two cultural worlds, while she clings to her cultural heritage, she still doesn't want to accept the American culture of the children. The children, in the story, may look like Native Americans or Mexicans, but their main language is English. The children also use examples of American culture with the comic characters, "Flash Gordon" and "Ming the Merciless."
Everyone had to prove they were independent, capable, and willing to integrate into the cultural melting pot with its own identity of hard work, grit, and determination which established and fostered success in American society. But, not everyone who chooses to take the adventure and risk associated with becoming American wishes to share in this identity. Many feel it necessary to shun the American identity and observe it with a level of disdain. Disregarding the reasons themselves or previous generations may have immigrated to America for. In the short story “Mericans”, Sandra Cisneros illustrates this concept through a character in the story. “The awful grandmother knits the names of the dead and the living into one long prayer fringed with the grandchildren born in that barbaric country with its barbaric ways. (Cisneros)”. In the story it is later identified the children in reference were indeed born in the United States. “Awful grandmother” has an incredibly low opinion of the society in which her grandchildren were born. Barbaric, let’s take a look at that word shall we—“without civilizing influences; uncivilized; primitive (barbaric)”. The detriment of that perception seems to be counterproductive to the melting pot concept of the United
The struggle to find a place inside an un-welcoming America has forced the Latino to recreate one. The Latino feels out of place, torn from the womb inside of America's reality because she would rather use it than know it (Paz 226-227). In response, the Mexican women planted the seeds of home inside the corral*. These tended and potted plants became her burrow of solace and place of acceptance. In the comfort of the suns slices and underneath the orange scents, the women were free. Still the questions pounded in the rhythm of street side whispers. The outside stare thundered in pulses, you are different it said. Instead of listening she tried to instill within her children the pride of language, song, and culture. Her roots weave soul into the stubborn soil and strength grew with each blossom of the fig tree (Goldsmith).
...eful to show us, the narrator is not the only self-centered, melodramatic member of this family. Given the family history, we can be fairly sure that things will soon be back to normal. The narrator will move back home, and the family, welcoming the diversion, will no doubt find a way of turning her homecoming into a new round of excitement.
Setting the tale in Nazi Germany creates an atmosphere of fear and anxiety, and establishes a set of circumstances in which it is possible for people to act in ways that would be unacceptable under other circumstances. The stepmother is a good example of this. She is the force in the family – it is she who decides that everyone in the family will have a better chance of survival, if they split up – the children going off alone together and the parents going in another direction. Unlike the portrayal of the stepmother in the Grimm fairy tale, this stepmother is not wicked. She is strong willed and determined, but not evil, although she is protecting herself and her husband by abandoning the children.
A picture of a woman with her two children shows that not every family is the stereotypical family with two parents and responsibilities are spilt with gender roles. The tired eyes, wrinkled skin, and aging face illustrates the struggles that a woman has to face, physically and emotionally, for her family. It shows the individual worth of being a woman, as she is not only the caretaker for her children but also the provider for their needs, which is a generally a man’s responsibility that she is executing, even though many men couldn’t provide for their families as they lost everything they had. A woman during this era is expected to stay with the children and make their home a haven, and she was stripped of the ability to do that by the necessity to become a migrant. The image cues for emotional responses with economy, as there were a few families during the Depression that hadn’t been severely affected and at least had a solid roof over their heads, food to eat and clothing to keep them covered. This image portrays a clear distinction of social class issues in the United States during the time, and “Migrant Mother” shows people what the life if a migrant worker from a poor family is really like during times of crisis. It proves that the Depression was a systematic failure in the political, economic, and social spheres, and the poor pea pickers are suffering an outcome for something they hadn’t caused. Their living government in the image show that there has been no political or economic help extended to them by a failing government. The pea crop had frozen; there was no work. There was no opportunity for prosperity and success, no possibility for an upward social mobility for the children, there was no land in which life was better and richer for everyone. This wasn’t the American Dream that everyone grows up thinking because this was about a crisis that left the entire