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Essay on Insight on the Life and Works of Julia Alvarez
Insight on the Life and Works of Julia Alvarez
A few ways that historical events have influenced literature
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Before We Were Free written by Julia Alvarez, tells the story of an 11 year old girl named Anita. She lives during a period of political issues in her country, the Dominican Republic. The story basically is about how Anita's father and uncle have a secret plan to assassinate the dictator because they want freedom in their country and how they reach freedom in the United States.
The story begins when, Anita is eleven years old and lives in the Dominican Republic with her family. Anita attends an American school and she is friends with the children of American Ambassadors and consulates. Anita lives on a compound with her parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and her former nanny. While she is looking forward to turning twelve and becoming more grown
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up, there are other changes occurring in her life that make her twelfth birthday somewhat insignificant. Anita’s cousins suddenly leave to the United States of America and her uncle is missing.
While all this is happening, the secret police invade her family's compound and the children are restricted from their regular activities. After this a family of americans move in next door and that is where Anita instantly falls in love with Sam. The American family then hosts a 15th birthday for their daughter. While the party the secret police show up and crash the party and moments later El Jefe shows up and gives the young quinceanera a rose and tells her he loves her. While all this happens Anita’s father creates a distraction so that they can escape from El Jefe. When this happened the girls father decided to send her to the United States so she could be as far away from El Jefe as possible. Their plan was to send the girl to the united states to work as a maid for her fathers friend, but it turns that after her visa gets approved they send her to New York with the rest of her …show more content…
family In Anita's life, everybody seems to have secrets and that makes Anita’s life change. Her school closes and Anita discovers that she has a hard time trying to find words to explain what she thinks. One evening Anita comes home to find her father, uncle, and friends on a mission. That same night they are planning on assassinating El Jefe They succeed in killing the dictator by shooting him, but the person who is in charge of announcing that the dictator is dead never shows up so the public isn't aware of their newfound freedom. This gives the dictators son time to rise in power, and he is even more evil than his father. He was determined to seek revenge on those who killed his father, and he sends his men to tear through the compound, taking Anita's dad and uncle away as prisoners. Anita and her mother go into hiding in the home of their friend who works in the Italian Embassy. Anita's brother had just left the compound earlier that day and was at great risk. He went to seek refuge in the Italian Embassy itself. Anita and her mother lived in a closet for several months. While hiding from the secret police and not being able to go outside, Anita kept a diary and wrote everything about her experience. One day, after having spent days in the closet she and her mother are rescued by paratroopers in a helicopter.
After being rescued they leave the country and join their family in New York City, where they have to learn to adapt to a culture very different to the one they had in the Dominican Republic. While Anita is in New York, she finds out that her father and uncle were killed by El Jefe’s son when they were found by the secret police. They were found because the secret police searched every home and found El Jefe’s body in the trunk of their car. Anita now has to come to term with what freedom really means since she never had it in her old country. Her father told her that he wanted her to be free and to fly. As Anita thinks over all that her family has been through, Anita discovers that freedom and the ability to fly lives within
her. I would recommend his book to anyone that wants to read something funny and interesting, because this book is about a young girl that has to face many problems and life changing situations, which is something that almost everybody goes through in their lives. I personally really enjoyed the book and I hope you do too.
When Anita has finally made it to the United States of America, she is anxious and nervous about her dad and uncle, all the time. As she is watching T.V. she yells, “ No!” I screamed at the T.V. and clapped my hands over my ears. “ I am not staying! I am not staying!”(136). This exhibits that Anita is still young minded and has childlike behavior. Anita thinks the person on T.V. is yelling at Anita, telling her she can’t go back to the Dominican Republic and has to stay in the United States for ever. The weak point in the opposing side is that, that is the one instance that Anita behaves like a
While she might think that her plans are working, they only lead her down a path of destruction. She lands in a boarding house, when child services find her, she goes to jail, becomes pregnant by a man who she believed was rich. Also she becomes sentenced to 15 years in prison, over a street fight with a former friend she double crossed. In the end, she is still serving time and was freed by the warden to go to her mother’s funeral. To only discover that her two sisters were adopted by the man she once loved, her sister is with the man who impregnated her, and the younger sister has become just like her. She wants to warn her sister, but she realizes if she is just like her there is no use in giving her advice. She just decides that her sister must figure it out by
When Marie tries to ask the protagonist to take a walk, this action shows that she is trying to achieve Pauline’s dream by getting her outside of the house. Therefore, she could finally feel the true meaning of freedom. Nevertheless, Pauline’s mother’s response demonstrates that she wants her daughter’s safety more than anything. The mother tries to keep Pauline away from the danger, so the protagonist can at last have a healthier life. However, Agathe’s reply shows that her mother is willing to sacrifice Pauline’s dream to keep her secure.
In the excerpt reading from Locking Up Our Own, the author, James Forman Jr., spoke about the issue our society has faced recently with mass incarceration of African-American males. He also talks about his own past experience with the situation through being a public defender. He had previously worked under Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and decided that he wanted to defend low-income individuals who were charged with crimes in Washington, D.C. Forman detailed a few specific cases he had working with young, African-American males and retold his reactions to some of the convictions.
In the story, set in the 1960’s, Anita lives in the Dominican Republic, a country with a dictator named el jefe. One day at school, Anita’s cousin is called out of class, and Anita is asked to go with. She finds out that her cousin is leaving for the United States with her family. From there, Anita’s life becomes pretty complicated. Her entire family lives on a compound, each with their own house. With her cousin’s family leaving, her house is the only occupied one left. Everyone has either moved to the U.S. or is missing. Her father tells her they will
Just as their father wanted, the girls kept their Dominican roots alive and never forgot where they came from. This novel, “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”, is a coming of age novel, where four girls learn through experience how it is like to grow up in a tough time period. In America, the girls had the freedom to attempt almost whatever they wanted because they were free from the constricting rule of the patriarchy that ruled the Dominican Republic. All four were growing up but took separate paths during life to get to where they are as adults. Through the use of multiple narrators, Alvarez creates different perspectives throughout the story. The girls have come a long way from their mother’s color coding system when they were identity less to the women they are today. Each sister fought and conquered some sort of internal or external battle, helping them to overcome obstacles given by society that marked them as different. As adults, the sisters can keep their Dominican roots alive while living in the United States through
In the novel, “The Book of Unknown Americans,” by Cristina Henriquez, she writes about the life of peoples migrating from Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Venezuela and many similar Spanish-speaking countries to the United States. This novel talks in deep about the hardships faced by such peoples. Many characters are involved to make this story interesting. But the story mainly revolves around Alma and Mayor. Alma is married to Arturo Rivera and belongs to Mexico. Also, she is the mother of Maribel. Basically, she is the one who cares for the betterment of her family first rather than other materialistic things around her. She is a great character with many redeeming qualities who sincerely plays her role as a supportive wife and as a dutiful mother.
Ana Castillo’s So Far from God (1993), begins its tale by immediately immersing the reader in the full drama that is typical of a Spanish soap opera describing the lives of five Hispanic women. The oldest daughter, Esperanza, wants to make a name for herself and succeeds in doing so by leaving Tome. Fe wants a normal life that she will never be able to have in Sofia’s household. Caridad is a simple soul that would have been content with her high school sweetheart had he not cheated on her. The youngest daughter, La Loca Santa, dies at age three and is resurrected to pray for the people. Lastly, Sofia turns out to be the strongest of the women in the novel by taking a stand for what she believes is right. Castillo uses Sofia and her four daughters to express her negative and distrustful view of patriarchy and oppression of women through class, gender and sexuality.
In Mary Rowlandson, “A Captivity Narrative”, Rowlandson recounts her experiences as a captive of the Wampanoag tribe. The tribe took captives from Lancaster in 1676 because of the ongoing violent altercations between the English colonists and Native Americans during King Philip’s War. Since many of the Native Americans brethren had fallen in battle, they saw it fit to take English folk captive and use them to take the place of their fallen brethren, trading/ransom pieces, or killing them in revenge. This was becoming a common practice for the Native Americans to attack villages and in result, some English started fleeing the area or started to retaliate. Rowlandson was a Puritan wife and mother, in her
It was quite fitting that the main base for the location setting of this story was in New Jersey, which is a quintessential destination for Dominican immigration. Many of the topics of Dominican society that were discussed in this
This story is about the friendship of too girls from very different families. Carlotta is a darker skinned girl whose family is "new money". She wants to go to Scared Heart Academy for her high school education. Scared Heart does not let in girls of her skin tone. The school has been financially struggling and Carlotta's father donates money to the school, which in turn get her accepted in to the school. Since she is new money she was not "locked up" in her home her whole life. She knows the town and tells her friend Merceditas all about the way things are there. The other girl, Merceditas come from a very wealthy family who has been this way for gene...
Before she and her husband came to the United State they thought of America as a place where all their dreams will come true. Candidido promised her wife a life of comfort, living in their house and having so many possessions. America’s view of US however changed as the story progresses, they were faced with hatred and sadness. She never ...
As an activist, Kevin Powell has written several essays and books about the things most people are afraid to mumble about. His Book Someday We’ll All Be Free is no different. It consists of three essays about Hurricane Katrina, September 11th, and the 2004 presidential election. Argumentatively they may all be described as tragedies that has afflicted America. Although these tragedies are different in circumstance and aftermath, it has affected us more than we fail to admit. Powell analyzes them on broader aspects in life such as; patriotism, unemployment, poverty, terrorism, and police brutality all of which are still very prevalent ten years later. I agree with these uncomfortable truths.
Having power is to have complete control over a group of people whom are willing to do anything that a person in high authority wants to do. It is obtained through deception-based channels . In other words, people get power by lying – this is what Rafael Trujillo did. Typically, in a dictatorship, the use of authority is utilized to ensure that a country remains under the control of the dictator. In Julia Alvarez's “Before We Were Free ,” life under Rafael Trujillo was deplorable. The people of the Dominican Republic lived in a society which was governed by intense fear. These people were afraid of being killed by the SIM – the primary control agency which kept control of the country. They kept this control by ensuring that if any form of rebellion
According to Dorothy Q Thomas in her article bringing, human rights home “The most obvious value of human rights in the post-Holocaust world has been to set a limit on government power and shine a light on its abuses. The limit comes from the revolutionary idea, conceived in the immediate aftermath of World War II, that all governments are constrained in their actions by the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of their people” Neo-Nazis cannot remerge in the United States .The president of the United States cannot be the new fascist leader and cause the extermination among race. Due to the existence of Human rights, the propositions of Donald trump on the possibility of creating mass deportation and excluding the Muslim community cannot