In the essay “ ‘Blaxicans’ and Other Reinvented Americans” is an effective writing style to persuade his audience because Rodriguez shows the reader how ironic people are in many different situations. For example, “There is something unsettling about immigrants because….well because they chatter incomprehensibly, and they get in everyone’s way. Immigrants seem to be bent on undoing American.” This reveals how Rodriguez shows verbal irony due to the fact that he is saying it but he does not really mean it for example in this quote Rodriguez said it but he is not the one who believes that while the white people are the ones who really consider immigrants as “Chatter”. To add on, Rodriguez shows this to display how the white people is just trying
to get attention on what they think of immigrants.
‘A Fabricated Mexican’ is a novel by Ricky Rivera in which he chronicles his life as he grows from a child farm worker to a Ph.D. candidate. He takes us through his journey in his search for his personal identity. In the book we find that his journey has not been an easy one. This difficult journey is due to many factors, most importantly the people who have surrounded him during this journey.
Chapter eight form the book From Indians To Chicanos by Diego Vigil, talks about the intact and stable social order. There are three subtopics in this chapter the first one is the industrialism and urbanization in classes. The second one is assimilation vs acculturation and the third one is the color of the intergroup that has to do with racism. All these subtopics are important because it was what made the social classes get united or separated.
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.
The author of Mexican Lives, Judith Adler Hellman, grapples with the United States’ economic relationship with their neighbors to the south, Mexico. It also considers, through many interviews, the affairs of one nation. It is a work held to high esteem by many critics, who view this work as an essential part in truly understanding and capturing Mexico’s history. In Mexican Lives, Hellman presents us with a cast from all walks of life. This enables a reader to get more than one perspective, which tends to be bias. It also gives a more inclusive view of the nation of Mexico as a whole. Dealing with rebel activity, free trade, assassinations and their transition into the modern age, it justly captures a Mexico in its true light.
For this specific essay that I read it is based on the effects of language and its values. I happened to read the essay called, “Coming into Language,” by a convict named Jimmy Santiago Baca. He was born in 1952 as an Apache Indian with a Chicano relation. Ever since Jim was a young individual he has been in and out of jail and roamed the streets before knowing the basics of right and wrong. From an early age he didn’t ever get a chance to read or understand writings. Because of his poor upbringing he wasn’t able to gain access to knowledge, and did not know that dropping out of the 9th grade could hurt the rest of his life. In the essay, Baca mainly focused on writing the essay to explain his values and beliefs. I believe that Baca wanted to bring his thoughts across to the Chicano decent and to other jail inmates who didn’t understand their upbringings as well. There is clear reasoning for this, stated in the essay it mentions when Baca started showing the Chicano’s and other prisoners, they too were building an interest. The main purpose of this essay is to show that people can change and make a difference. From a person who was given nothing, and dealt with misery for his first half of his life was able to learn to read and write (then later on learned to write poems.)
In the story "Like Mexicans", Gary Soto explains how his grandmother was an influence in his life. She would always give him advice; both good and bad. One of her good advice was that he should marry a woman of a certain race. Soto 's grandmother raised him believing his future wife should be Mexican. She gave him reasons why a Mexican girl would make a great wife. His mother agrees and supports the idea. For years, he was in search of his brown girl. He was infatuated with the idea of finally finding a nice Mexican girl. Later he realizes that his mother wanted him to marry someone of his own social class--a poor girl. But surprisingly, he doesn’t marry a Mexican girl. He married a Japanese girl. He was in love with her. But after seeing his mother and grandmother worry about his decision, he starts
In Aria,” from Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Richard Rodriguez shares his autobiography of when he first entered his classroom at catholic school. He writes of his transition through emotions of fear, insecurity, and self-doubt as he transitions from the privacy of his home to the public world. Richard develops an understanding that his that private language that is used in his home is different from the language that is publicly acceptable in school. His school teachers pushed his americanalization which led him to discover his identity, since he indeed was an American but grew up in a Spanish speaking home. Through this journey of journey of assimilation he discovers that learning this new language brought him a sense of comfortability and acceptance. Richard Rodriguez heavily relates to the Crevecoeurian immigrant because he was willing to learn a new language, leave his culture behind, and embrace his American identity.
Vargas attracts attention to the readers by showing his hardships that he has been going through since he was a child, which is an example of appeal Pathos. From a child knowing not enough English, for many years learn at school and self-learn, he becomes co-editor of The Oracle, the student newspaper at Mountain View High School then a journalist. He is also part of a Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech. However, he is determined to do his best and trying to be as involved as he can with everything, working hard throughout high school and earn better positions with his job. He convinces himself that if he worked hard enough he could really earn his citizenship. Living along with his status, he builds his career as a journalist and tells his secret to some people. After reading this article, the readers can feel his tone such as a good person, a fellow citizen, which is the way to express his use of pathos throughout the entire essay.
Richard Rodriguez offers an alternate yet equally profound truth: While our heritage and culture may remain forever tied to and expressed in our native or "home" language, only through the dominant language of our country (English in most cases) can we achieve a place in society that gives us a feeling that we belong amongst everyone else. The only way we can truly become a part of our community and fit in is to dominate the current spoken language. In the United States, the dominant language is Standard English. In this excerpt from "Aria," a chapter in his autobiography entitled "Hunger of Memory": The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez discusses public and private languages, and agrees that his achievements in English separated him from his Spanish family and culture but also brought him "the belief, the calming assurance that [he] belonged in public." We as human beings want to feel we belong. We search for that place in society where we are most comfortable all our lives. One should consider the benefits of mastering the dominant language of the society they live in, but should also take into account the harm of taking your native language for granted. I will attempt to explore both of these considerations and examine Rodriguez place in life now, by stating the facts of who is now by the childhood decisions that were made.
David Foster Wallace, author of the essay “Authority and American Usage*,” praises and advocates for “good” writers who have a strong rhetorical ability, which he defines as “the persuasive use of language to influence the thoughts and actions of an audience” (Wallace 628). To have a strong rhetorical ability, an author needs to be aware of whom their audience is, in order to present their information in a way that will be influential on their audience. Wallace recognizes that an author who applies a strong rhetorical ability will be able to connect with the audience so that they respond “not just to [their] utterance but also to [them]” (Wallace 641). An author needs to take into consideration not just content, syntax and grammatical structure (their “utterance”) but also how their character will be perceived by their audience. A positive tone will make the author seem more pleasant and relatable, whereas a negative tone connotes arrogance and pretentiousness. That is why it is crucial for an author to recognize that an audience will respond to “them” and not just their “utterance,” as an author’s appearance to their readers can also shape how impactful their writing is.
Writers like Amy Tan, use rhetorical writing to display emotional appeal, tone, style, and even organization. In Tan’s article, Mothers Tongue, she writes about her experiences with her mother's inability to speak English. She provides examples from her childhood of being discriminated, and stereotyped because of her race. Tan addresses cultural racism without showing any anger or specifically pointing out racism. She makes the reader realize that immigrants have to deal with discrimination, and disrespect in their daily lives. She uses Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to let the reader see what she went through in her early childhood experiences. Her audience reaches out to families who speak “broken English”, and have to deal with being discriminated, and disrespected.
In her essay, Mukherjee uses several rhetorical devices such as figurative language and exemplification in order to lead the audience to believe her argument. She believes in assimilation of culture, but it should not be forced upon any one. Throughout the essay, she goes through a logical thought process that leads the audience to realize this argument and even feel guilty of forced conformity.
Gina Valdes in her poem English con Salsa used many literary techniques. One of them was humor and throughout the poem it is used greatly. An example of it starts in the beginning where the po...
Elements of minority cultures are continually hijacked, re-invented and commercialized until the origin and cultural significance becomes unknown to its consumers. Notably, languages and dialects such as Spanish and African American Vernacular English, often crossover into popular culture and mainstream media. In Jane H. Hill text, “Language, Race, and White Public Space,” Hill points to the appropriation of Spanish by Whites through the usage of “Mock Spanish,” a mix between English and Spanish. According to Hill, Mock Spanish is harmful because it reduces Spanish to a colloquialism and reproduces stereotypes that construct “white public spaces” in which it is only acceptable for white people to use Spanish. In the same way that Mock Spanish is a “racist discourse,” the crossover of African American Vernacular English into popular culture is pervasive and dangerous because it erases the voices of black people and belittles the cultural significance of African American Vernacular English in Black
In his article, he tries to show readers his ideas and concepts with examples. For instance, he chooses example of Nazism when he claims racial differences regard as a cultural perspective from a biological perspective which was disliked causes of Holocaust by Nazism. (Malik 86) He also picks French to explain all people who have common language do not have a common recognition against the world. (Malik 86) These examples are related to his arguments when he claims ineffectiveness of dying language so examples he gives in the article can make his ideas simply because the readers are likely to imagine how the author tries to say ineffectiveness of dying language. Also, these examples are reliable for readers because he uses factual references and examples which is one of the techniques in article “Thinking and Reading Critically”. His idea is strengthened by using this technique. For example, in “Let Them Die”, he says “Today, biological notions of racial difference have fallen into disfavor, largely as a result of the experience of Nazism and the Holocaust”.(Malik 86) Nazism and the Holocausts are very famous institution and event in world history as everyone knows. People are likely to think about how much the author wants to discourage preservation of dying language. These examples show how you can convince people well because factual example can be a reliable evidence, and support claims to make easy to understand for