A cultural narrative is an important story that allows others outside that one specific culture to learn and understand people who are in that culture. When people hear about other cultural narratives it allows people to view the reality of how a person life is within that culture. People are able to see the hardship other cultures endure in society and also able to view what drives those in society. Cultural narratives to me are sets of stories about one’s own culture that teaches me hardships of one’s cultural, morality lesson from that cultural narrative, and helps me understand how difficult it is for most cultures to live in another foreign society. The learning aspect from hearing another’s cultural narrative is important because it allows …show more content…
People within a new society may experience hardships because cultural narratives to me show the cruelty of how people act just because someone has a different identity. People undergo hardships because they are different and are not accepted as normal within another society. Many cultural narrative either suffer from society, benefit in that certain society, or have no effects based on the society people with different cultural backgrounds reside …show more content…
Julia Alvarez writes a personal story about her life changing experience adapting to a different culture. Julia Alvarez was born in the Dominican republic and her family moved to the states to provide a secure future for the family. Parents tend to move to America to provide an education for their children or to escape their national threats from their born country. Julia Alvarez begins to compare and contrasts her experience adapting to a different culture. As she lives in America Julia Alvarez is inspired by many writers and political figures that she grew up with in America. Also Julia Alvarez describes how difficult it was for her to adapt to a different culture and learn a new language in this foreign land she now resides in. Julia Alvarez states ‘’My sister and I being young, soon rallied to the challenge. We learned the new language, the new mind, the new music, the ways to dress and behave ourselves. But our our success on these fronts soon created a another kind of problem in our family. My parent wanted desperately to keep us to the old standards, and yet they also wanted us to succeed in this culture”. Julia Alvarez’s cultural narrative shows that she went through an hardship because of her new identity and her conflicted old cultural identity. Julia alvarez shows this by mention
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
Alvarez demonstrates generational boundary when discussing,“The quince tradition has always been important, but there’s this retroculturation going on right now” (56). Alvarez illustrates that retroculturation is a pattern within the Hispanic community where loss of culture is present for a generation. Alvarez explains how the first generation wants to assimilate in America with their culture, while the second generation has adapted to American norms so they have lost their culture and no longer speak spanish; however, the third generation is born and bred in America and now wants to learn about their hispanic culture by learning Spanish. Teens shop at popular American malls but listen to Spanish radios to embrace diversity (56). Similarly, Munoz is confronted with the issue of generational boundaries when he admits, “I was born in 1972, a generation that learned both English and Spanish” (308). The generation before Munoz grew up speaking only Spanish which causes a barrier between one families generation to the next. Munoz speaks Spanish at home and English in public along with his other cousins who serve as translators for their household. While the second generation before Munoz have no way of following Spanish because they have already adapted to American norms and in some ways lost an important cultural aspect (308). Alvarez and Savan are interconnected because each
If someone were to be torn from everything they know in order to live in a new country with a new culture and surroundings, they would face changes in themselves. Yolanda Garcia from the novel How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, faces these changes in her identity and culture. After immigrating to America from the Dominican Republic, Yolanda is immediately confronted by the new culture that surrounds her. It leads her to feel insecure about who she is, and she feels the need to fit in with the Americans. Being a Dominican immigrant causes Yolanda to become insecure about herself and her culture, confused by the mix of two cultures she lives with, and to lose her sense of identity.
Oftentimes, societal problems span across space and time. This is certainly evident in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents a novel in which women are treated peripherally in two starkly different societies. Contextually, both the Dominican Republic and the United States are very dissimilar countries in terms of culture, economic development, and governmental structure. These factors contribute to the manner in which each society treats women. The García girls’ movement between countries helps display these societal distinctions. Ultimately, women are marginalized in both Dominican and American societies. In the Dominican Republic, women are treated as inferior and have limited freedoms whereas in the United States, immigrant
The autobiography Journey of Hope Memoirs of a Mexican Girl and the documentary short “Children in No Man’s Land” has brought into light three important topics that are results of immigration. The first is the “American dream” and the notion of yearning to migrate abroad to seek dreams formed by misconceptions of the limited knowledge one has of their destination. The second is assimilation and the process of assimilating oneself to their new homeland. The third is a unique situation presented in both these works, which is estrangement from their family members. This paper attempts to critically analyze the unique journey of immigration for Rosalina, Maria de Jesus, and Rene. It argues that glorified images and dreams of what America could be like falsely creates a sense of hope. It focuses on the dual task of reviewing the process of assimilation based on each immigrant situation, and an examination of familial estrangement as
Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth chapter, namely the domestic abuse scene, functions as a pivotal point in the Mother Tongue as it helps her to define herself.
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
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.
It sometimes is quite difficult to find one’s voice when no one is truly listening or understands. Yolanda, or "Yo", a Dominican immigrant, has grown up to be a writer and in the process infuriates her entire family by publishing the intimate details of their lives as fiction. “¡Yo!” is an exploration of a woman's soul, a meditation on the writing life, as well as a lyrical account of Latino immigrants’ search for identity and a place in the United States. Julia Alvarez divides her novel ¡Yo! into chapters to distinguish the perspectives of each member of the Garcia family. Through the stylistic, subtle homage to the Spanish language as well as speaking on the horrors that occurred during the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, Julia Alvarez showcases storytelling in the first chapter of her novel titled “From ¡Yo! The Mother” to show how Yo and her entire family used it to cope with their struggles as immigrants in America. By telling stories, Yo’s mother Laura, battles between her Dominican and American identities to ultimately redefine not only who she is, but also who she and her family will be.
The experiences she had when she was still living in the Dominican Republic combined with the separation from the country she immigrated to and the symbols of the fantasy of American life demonstrate her internal conflict further. The poem makes one wonder how they would have felt in the shoes of the subjects. Having to deal with a new style of living while leaving almost everything from the old one behind is something that many people are lucky to never have to go through. Many people, likely including Julia Alvarez, think they take that for granted. Her purpose for writing the poem was most likely to capture the readers minds and be thankful that these are things that they do not and will not likely have to deal
The Statue of Liberty is an American icon because it symbolizes freedom, success, and the power of this nation. This image is what the U.S stands for to the outside world. Foreigners strive to move to America because of its wealth and acceptance towards all races and ethnicity. “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” recounts the story of how Carlos Garcia, Laura Garcia, and their four girls move from the Dominican Republic to the United States to escape a dictatorship, and establish a new life in flourishing New York City. Many unexpected culture shocks await them in their new country. Although the girls find it difficult to adapt at first, they soon begin to assimilate and Americanize. On the other hand, “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl” by Elizabeth Wong illustrates the life of an Asian American having to embrace two entirely different cultural identities. Both the Garcia family and Elizabeth Wong's family have to deal with two opposing cultures without losing too much of their heritage. The book and the essay are similar in that characters in each story lose much of their original tradition. However, they are different in that the families move to the states for distinctive reasons, and the cultural preference of “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl” is more evident than that of “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”.
Many reviews have been written on Julia Alvarez since she is a Dominican Diaspora, a Jew who lived outside of Israel, who wrote in a Latina perspective in the country of Uni...
The poem “Exile” by Julia Alvarez dramatizes the conflicts of a young girl’s family’s escape from an oppressive dictatorship in the Dominican Republic to the freedom of the United States. The setting of this poem starts in the city of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, which was renamed for the brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo; however, it eventually changes to New York when the family succeeds to escape. The speaker is a young girl who is unsophisticated to the world; therefore, she does not know what is happening to her family, even though she surmises that something is wrong. The author uses an extended metaphor throughout the poem to compare “swimming” and escaping the Dominican Republic. Through the line “A hurried bag, allowing one toy a piece,” (13) it feels as if the family were exiled or forced to leave its country. The title of the poem “Exile,” informs the reader that there was no choice for the family but to leave the Dominican Republic, but certain words and phrases reiterate the title. In this poem, the speaker expresser her feeling about fleeing her home and how isolated she feels in the United States.
My personal cultural identity is a lot different compared to the society I am surrounded by. I am considered an outsider in my society. I am an outsider living in a constantly changing environment where there are many different kinds of people and many different cultural identities. In my culture we know how to respect people and their belongings, know how to work hard, use what we have while being thankful for it at the same time, and last we know how to stay true to ourselves in this very fast pace world of ours. I am a cowboy.
Life experiences allow individual to grasp the meaning of culture, people in our surrounding, and value the ethnic diversity into our society. Culture consists of the knowledge people use to live