Throughout history, a wide variety of groups of people have been cruelly mistreated due to their race, religion, social status, economic status,sexuality, physical appearance, and a continuing list of other additional factors. This is known as oppression, something that occurs in society in present-day and will likely always be a part of it. Richard Blanco’s poem ‘America,’ and Dorothea Lange’s photograph ‘Migrant Mother’ both portray oppression from two different viewpoints, discussing its features. ‘America’ is a poem that examines the ways a migrant or foreign family must juggle their two identities while living in America. The piece is set in a Hispanic family’s home during Thanksgiving, a traditional American national holiday. The narrator appears to be a young child, who is adapting quickly to the new life surrounding him. The narrator observes other American families following certain customs with the holiday such as how “Patty Duke’s family wasn’t like us either/ they didn’t have pork on Thanksgiving;/ they ate turkey with cranberry …show more content…
The narrator longs to have these new traditions, as he feels pressured to follow the ways of the country he is living in. Additionally, the narrator’s enthusiasm for America is seen when he tells his family the stories of “the Indians and the Mayflower;/ how Lincoln set the slaves free;/ … the ‘masses yearning to be free’/ liberty and justice for all, until/ finally they agreed/ this Thanksgiving we would have turkey,/ as well as pork” (Blanco IV). The family decides, hesitatingly, to try these American traditions in order to please the yearning child. Both traditions are shown on the table through the different types of foods made, but most prominently this is seen in the “bilingual blessing” (Blanco V) which the narrator utters as the turkey is
Although Americans vary widely in ethnicity and race and minorities are far from sparse, racism has never been in short supply. This has led to many large scale issues from Irish immigrants not begin seen as Americans during the Irish famine, to Mexican-American citizens having their citizenship no longer recognized during the Mexican Cession, all the way to Japanese internment camps during World War II. Both Dwight Okita and Sandra Cisneros Both give accounts of the issue from the perspective of the victims of such prejudice. Rather than return the injustice, both Okita and Cisneros use it to strengthen their identity as an American, withstanding the opinion of others.
The female, adolescent speaker helps the audience realize the prejudice that is present in a “melting-pot” neighborhood in Queens during the year 1983. With the setting placed in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, the poem allows the audience to examine the experience of a young immigrant girl, and the inequality that is present during this time. Julia Alvarez in “Queens, 1963” employs poetic tools such as diction, figurative language, and irony to teach the reader that even though America is a place founded upon people who were strangers to the land, it is now home to immigrants to claim intolerance for other foreigners, despite the roots of America’s founding.
The narrator also discusses about a girl about the same age as her would have never been the “right kind of American.” Minorities such as the African Americans, Dominican Americans and any other ethnicity that came to America were looked right under the microscope. This perplexed me I do not understand why they are treated unfairly by the “True Americans.” There is no such thing as True Americans and that this poem definitely targeted it's audience through racial discrimination rather than cultural changes within a neighborhood in Queens, NY. Another Poet had a much refined and unique style of another part of New York City, he is one of my favorite poets Langston Hughes.
Islas, Arturo. From Migrant Souls. American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings in Context. Eds. Gabriele Rico, Barbara Roche and Sandra Mano. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1995. 483-491.
Wright left the South when he decided he could no longer withstand the poverty he had long dwelled in because he was an useless African American in the eyes of the racist, white men. Little did he know that this decision he made in order to run away from poverty would become the impetus to his success as a writer later on in life. In Wright’s autobiography, his sense of hunger derived from poverty represents both the injustice African Americans had to face back then, and also what overcoming that hunger means to his own kind. The Tortilla Curtain and Black Boy are two of the many books which illustrate the discrimination going on in our unjust societies. Through the words of T. C. Boyle and Richard Wright, the difficulties illegal Mexican immigrants and African Americans had and still have to face are portrayed.
The world today can sometimes be a hard place to live, or at least live in comfort. Whether it be through the fault of bullies, or an even more wide spread problem such as racism, it is nearly impossible to live a day in the world today and feel like it was only full of happiness and good times. Due to this widespread problem of racism, often times we tend to see authors go with the grain and ignore it, continuously writing as if nothing bad happens in the world. Fortunately, Claudia Rankine, is not one of these authors. Rankine manages to paint a vivid picture of a life of hardships in her lyric Citizen: An American Lyric. In this lyric Claudia Rankine shows that she truly has a very interesting and not commonly used approach to some literary
Poems are forms of communication that give an applicable view of the past, present and future events. Reading the poem titled “America”, written by Richard Blanco brought me memories from my childhood in my parent’s house and also what is happening now in my house as a parent. The poem explains how one person doesn’t have all the knowledge about something. It also, describes the daily life struggles I experienced during my childhood, when my parent 's and I moved from our hometown to live in another town becuase of their work and it brings to light the conflict of cultures I and my children are going through since we moved to United State of America .
Often depicted as a melting pot, America is always being put on a pedestal by the rest of the world due to the large amounts of successful immigrants in the United States. Millions of people have packed their bags and moved to America in hopes of achieving their dreams. While some succeed, others fail and are let down by the dim reality that not everyone can achieve their goals. This essay will compare the poems, “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes and “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus to exhibit my perspective on both works. Both poems portray people’s hopes that America will be great, however, due to the different eras and the authors’ backgrounds, the poems have different meanings. Lazarus’ poem was written in the early stages of America, as it describes her cheerful
“There exists this medical term- John Henryism- for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure. ”1 People who live with this constant stress have the sense that they need to work extraordinarily harder for their accomplishments to be recognized, and prevent the erasure of their entire life meaning. In the book Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine describes her personal encounters with racism and inequality, and its ceaseless recurrence proves that both ideologies are still thriving today. Whether it be from a stranger, or a close friend, attacks on her person and identity are a repetitive manifestation in her everyday life.
The concept of America changes through these authors poems and short stories . They all portray American society in different manners, and reveal their opinions on issues through various literary methods. Although they all analyze and write about different issues, they are all intertwined by the concept of society in America.
African American’s have faced a great deal of harsh and cruel treatment throughout our society. From being stripped from their homeland of Africa and being brought to America as slaves, African Americans have seen and been through it all. Author and renowned poet Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks discusses and describes many of the cruel and unfair treatment that African Americans have faced throughout our civilization. Brooks’ not only speaks on the racial prejudice of African Americans, but she also discusses the heartaches, the life, and the growth of African Americans as a people. Brooks’ poetry and stories are very similar to her own experience growing up as an African American woman.
Harvest Of Shame, an interesting and touching black and white documentary from the early 1960’s, documents and exposes the deploring lives of thousands of American migrant cultural workers narrated and dissected by one of the best and first American broadcast journalists called Edward Roscoe Murrow. The principal objective of this movie is not only to show the poor and miserable lives that all of these people live, but to let all the other Americans who are above these workers on the social and wealth scale know that the people who pick up their fruits, vegetables, and grains have no voice, no power, and no help to battle the inequities and mistreatment they receive.
Being discriminated, singled out, and not included is commonly seen or experienced in today’s society. Those that have seen or experienced it understand the true meaning of the “other”. The “other” can mean not human, unprivileged, and seen as a minority. In the poem “Immigrants in Our Own Land” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, a concept of the other is displayed. In the poem, the “other” are the prisoners along with the speaker. Baca makes a connection with the prisoners as ther “other” by displaying the mistreatment and suffering they are put through. In “Immigrants in Our Own Land” Jimmy Santiago Baca builds the other through diction, imagery, and metaphors.
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).
Each year, the requirements that immigrants need to have access to the country have become more difficult with each new year. Apart from the legal requirements necessary to enter the U.S., this process can be affected by the race and origin of an immigrant. The authors of “The Border: A Double Sonnet” and “The New Colossus” share their perspective on immigration through their poems. Each author’s perspective has been influenced by their time, the privilege and restrictions they faced due to their race, and regulations due to the impact of their poetry about immigration in the U.S. Beginning with a long time between the events that happen in the poem “The Border: A Double Sonnet” written by Alberto Rios and the poem “The New Colossus” written