Analysis Of Once Upon A Quinceañera

Should every girl have a quinceañera? This is the question Julia Alverez is arguing in Once Upon a Quinceañera. Alverez believes that these celebrations are problematic and cause a lot of issues with gender, finances, and culture. She is clear in her purpose for this essay and achieves what she is aiming to do, which is to make her readers question quinceañeras. “I asked her about this claim I’d heard that quinceañeras really turn girls around. Not that I wanted an analysis or anything academic, I added, thinking maybe I was sounding too much like a doubting-Thomas gringa. But with all those statistics still heavy in my heart, I wanted to hear why she thought quinceañeras were so effective.” (Alverez, 2008, pp. 47) This quotation demonstrates

the authors' purpose which is logos and pathos. Alverez first goes on to speak about the issues of gender in quinceañeras.

Julia Alverez starts off with saying that “My first year at Abbot did for me what Isabella Martínez Wall’s year of going to quinceañeras and having her own quinceañeras did for her. It gave me a new community to belong to, a narrative I could follow into adulthood. Instead of a family and community rallying around the quinceañera’s transformation into a woman, planning and preparing sometimes for a year for that symbolic pageant marking her passage, I had a community of classmates and female teachers and coaches and housemothers honing my skills, encouraging my talents, preparing me for being what Isabella Martínez Wall would call ‘queen of my own life’”. (Alverez, 2008, pp. 48) This quote is essential to know because although these two women ultimately both became the “queen of their own life”, Alverez believes that she did it better, for the main reason of having the opportunity to grow as a woman in an academic setting rather than what is essentially a party that celebrates becoming a woman. She goes on to say “Although some psychological elements of the American quinceañera and my first Abbot year were the same – a community grooming a young lady for her entry into womanhood – the content of that grooming was significantly different. We at Abbot girls were encouraged to develop our minds, not leave our brains parked at the door of gender.” (Alverez, 2008, pp. 49) This is the first time Alverez outwardly mentions gender, but it is a crucial argument in her purpose. She quickly goes on to say “In contrast, the typical quinceañera enacts a traditional narrative that is, let’s face it, a one-(very small)-size-fits-all script corseting a full-bodied female life. The young Latina is dressed up in finery, not unlike a bride, her father is changing her shoes, claiming that first waltz, then passing her on to a brother or uncle or grandfather, until she finally ends up in the arts of her escort to a round of applause. The quinceañera is like a rehearsal wedding without a groom, and it sends a clear message to the Latina girl: We expect you to get married, have children, devote yourself to your family. It’s no wonder that girls end up getting pregnant soon after celebrating their quinces. Jaider Sánchez, a hairdresser and dance coach for quinceañeras in Denver mentioned in a recent interview that out of seven quinceañeras he instructed in 2005, four have already invited him to their baby showers” Within this quote, she again uses both logos and pathos. She shows you emotion by giving her opinion on how the Latina girl is meant to feel and do after a quinceañera and then gives you statistics on a number of baby showers Jaider Sánchez was invited to in 2005. She goes on to use pathos again, “Maybe that is why I get tearful at quinceañeras. I’m watching the next generation be tamed into a narrative my generation fought so hard to change. Why I feel like a snake in the garden, because here I sit in their living rooms or in their rented halls, eating their catered food, celebrating with la Familia, and I am thinking, why spend all this money enacting a fantasy that the hard numbers out there say it’s not going to come true?” This continues on to Alverez second qualm with quinceañeras, finances.
While at an expo for quinceañeras, Alverez goes to a seminar on financing with the host Sunita Trevino. Trevino tells the women in the audience, “The majority of [my] clients are single women who are in financial trouble. They don’t budget. They overspend. They get into debt. [I] know women in their seventies still paying off second mortgages they took out for their daughter’s quinceañera. [I] find this devastating.” (Alverez, 2008, pp. 53) Alverez uses this quote in order to first, show pathos, and second, prove that she is not the only one concerned about how expensive quinceañeras are. She brings logos into play again by saying “They threw the house out the window for that girls quinceañera. They threw the house out the window. In a country where the rate of poverty is growing (12.7 percent of the U.S. citizens were living below the poverty line in 2004, up from 11.3 percent in 2000.) with Latinos forming a sizable portion of those impoverished numbers (21.9 percent of the Hispanic population was living below the poverty line in 2004 according to a U.S. census survey) Sunita, it turns out, was not exaggerating.” (Alverez, 2008, pp. 54) using the statistics to show readers the reality of poverty taps in on our logical thinking. Alverez mentions that quinceañeras can range up to $80,000 and that Latinx families feel the need to deliver. Someone quotes, “If it had to be that cheap I just wouldn’t have one. What for? It is in the nature of the beast to be a splurge, an extravaganza.” (Alverez, 2008, pp. 55) Alverez then goes on to tell a story of a man who confessed that he was “only” spending about $12,000 on his daughter’s quince. For Alverez’ last concern surrounding quinceañeras, she focuses in on culture and tradition.

Alverez says “To have a full-blown traditional quinceañera in our Pan-Hispanic United States is to have adopted every other Latino group’s little traditions and then some.

So that now, Cuban quinceañeras in Miami are hiring Mexican mariachis to sing the traditional “Las Mañanitas…As is the changing of the shoes to heels, which seems to originally have been a Puerto Rican embellishment…The tradition of crowning the young girl is often ascribed to the Mexicans, who seem to be the group that has most ritualized the ceremony. But here in America, every quinceañera gets her tiara. The bouquet the quinceañera carries to put at the Virgin Mary’s statue at the Mass is also part of the Mexican and Central American tradition, as is the Mass, which our more hedonistic Caribbean party-cultures dispensed with back home. But now the Mass and the Virgin’s bouquet have become part of our Dominican and Puerto Rican and Cuban “tradition” in the United States.” This is heavily filled with logos because she is telling us all of the different traditions and cultures that quinceañeras have borrowed from each other, but it does not stop at just borrowing from different Latinx communities, “Sometimes these cultural borrowings are not even coming from fellow Latinos. The tradition of lighting and dedicating candles, for example, seems to have been lifted from the Bar and Bat Mitzvah. In fact, many critics see the quinceañera as going the same route as the Jewish celebration.” The extravagance of a quinceañera also relies heavily on culture. Initially, Alverez was dismissive of this kind of “cultural profiling” but once she realized this thought was echoed by Octavio Paz, a seminal writer on Mexican identity, she changed her mind. Paz says, “Our poverty can be measured by the frequency and luxuriousness of our holidays. Fiestas are our only luxury. Wasting money and expending energy affirms the community’s wealth in both. When life is thrown away it increases. What is sought is potency,

life, health. In this sense the fiesta….is one of the most ancient economic forms.” (Alverez, 2008, pp. 62) Alverez then goes on to explain the term “cultural capital”. “The term, originally coined by Pierre Bourdieu, describes other kinds of assets, not monetary that are important for the status in a community. A family’s throwing its daughter a lavish quinceañera represents a kind of cultural statement that counts for a lot more than the dollar cost. Thinking only of “how much it cost” in dollar amount is to simplify a much more complex and layered transaction.” (Alverez, 2008, pp. 62)
Alverez is very clear in her purpose of this argument, quinceañeras are problematic and should be questioned. She easily explains her proposition using logos and pathos throughout the essay.