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In the city of Havana in Cuba back in 1989, was a little spot restaurant called La Cocina Ramona. A young girl named Selena Rivera had been working there as a dishwasher for about a year now. She started at age 13 working in the kitchen and busing tables. At the same time, she would look and watch the cooks work. She could remember when she was 10 after coming home from martial arts training, her mother would teach her and her sisters the art of cooking. Sylvia Fierro, the chef, needed help with getting ingredients prepped. “This is the list of what I need,” She said, holding the paper up in the air. Without waiting for an answer, Selena snatches the list from Sylvia's hand “I’ll do it” she says, and started going to work chopping lettuce,
As far back as Rigoberta Manchu can remember, her life has been divided between the highlands of Guatemala and the low country plantations called the fincas. Routinely, Rigoberta and her family spent eight months working here under extremely poor conditions, for rich Guatemalans of Spanish descent. Starvation malnutrition and child death were common occurrence here; rape and murder were not unfamiliar too. Rigoberta and her family worked just as hard when they resided in their own village for a few months every year. However, when residing here, Rigoberta’s life was centered on the rituals and traditions of her community, many of which gave thanks to the natural world. When working in the fincas, she and her people struggled to survive, living at the mercy of wealthy landowners in an overcrowded, miserable environment. By the time Rigoberta was eight years old she was hard working and ...
In the book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser talks about the working conditions of fast food meat slaughterhouses. In the chapter “The Most Dangerous Job,” one of the workers, who despised his job, gave Schlosser an opportunity to walk through a slaughterhouse. As the author was progressed backwards through the slaughterhouse, he noticed how all the workers were sitting very close to each other with steel protective vests and knives. The workers were mainly young Latina women, who worked swiftly, accurately, while trying not to fall behind. Eric Schlosser explains how working in the slaughterhouses is the most dangerous profession – these poor working conditions and horrible treatment of employees in the plants are beyond comprehension to what we see in modern everyday jobs, a lifestyle most of us take for granted.
Esperanza, a Chicano with three sisters and one brother, has had a dream of having her own things since she was ten years old. She lived in a one story flat that Esperanza thought was finally a "real house". Esperanza’s family was poor. Her father barely made enough money to make ends meet. Her mother, a homemaker, had no formal education because she had lacked the courage to rise above the shame of her poverty, and her escape was to quit school. Esperanza felt that she had the desire and courage to invent what she would become.
Doroteo Aranga learned to hate aristocratic Dons, who worked he and many other Mexicans like slaves, Doroteo Aranga also known as Pancho villa hated aristocratic because he made them work like animals all day long with little to eat. Even more so, he hated ignorance within the Mexican people that allowed such injustices. At the young age of fifteen, Aranga came home to find his mother trying to prevent the rape of his sister. Aranga shot the man and fled to the Sierra Madre for the next fifteen years, marking him as a fugitive for the first time. It was then that he changed his name from Doroteo Aranga to Francisco "Pancho" Villa, a man he greatly admired.
To understand fully the implicit meaning and cultural challenges the film presents, a general knowledge of the film’s contents must be presented. The protagonist, Tita, suffers from typical Hispanic cultural oppression. The family rule, a common rule in this culture, was that the youngest daughter is to remain unwed for the duration of her mother’s life, and remain home to care for her. Mama Elena offers her daughter, Tita’s older sister Rosaura, to wed a man named Pedro, who is unknowingly in mutual love with Tita. Tita is forced to bake the cake for the wedding, which contains many tears that she cried during the process. Tita’s bitter tears cause all the wedding guests to become ill after consuming the cake, and Tita discovers she can influence others through her cooking. Throughout the film, Tita’s cooking plays an important role in all the events that transpire.
Then she saw a greasy china plate that had bread crumbs, cheese and sausage. The pungent of cheese made her stomach grumble. The man was very rude and insulted her because she couldn’t read. Then Frances headed home and on her way, she bumped into a girl with a nice, green, winter coat. She imagined her Ma in that coat, twirling around with a smile on her face. The girl’s mother said a rather offensive sentence about Frances and walked away with her daughter.
Esperanza Cordero, the protagonist, is a round, dynamic character who grows both emotionally and physically during her time on Mango Street. Esperanza begins writing this story when she is around 12 years old, causing the writing to be naive in the beginning. She sees things as a child would see them, innocently. Throughout the story, Esperanza struggles with the feelings of loneliness and shame of being poor. All she wants is to fit in with someone somewhere. Esperanza uses her writing to connect with va...
Yezierska, Anzia, and Alice Harris. Bread givers: a novel ; with photographs. 3. ed. New York, NY: Persea Books, 2003. Print.
The Ukita family is kneeling around a small table in a small room. The extent of the food they’ve purchased over the past week is arranged around this tiny living area. The space is somewhat cramped as they attempt to arrange themselves comfortably, and Mio Ukita, the eldest daughter of the family finds herself squeezed into the far right corner of the room next to a red tray of plastic wrapped cakes. A television no one’s thought to turn off blares brightly in the room as a processed food commercial beams to life and an actor holds out the heralded food item as if sternly urging the audience to simply reach out and take it. The screen is paused at this moment as it’s determined to be the perfect image to make the scene complete, and the Ukita’s youngest daughter, Maya, reaches out for a bag of her favorite potato chips. She clutches the bag to her chest as she maneuvers her way back to perch on a red cushion near her mother. Everyone looks up at something only they can see, and from that spot a bright light flashes, and a photograph is taken (D’Aluisio & Menzel, 2008, p.94).
In conclusion, Julia Child’s experiences display all that can be done when people do not give up. Although she was often excluded in her cooking classes, she did not quit. Creating a French cookbook for Americans was not an easy task either, but she did not back down. Trying to publish her cookbook and having to deny requests from their original publisher was definitely painful. But, her thick skin, endurance, and principle all payed off when the first edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking finally hit the shelves.
In Prisoners of Poverty by Helen Campbell, it is illustrated that factory workers, such as the one interviewed in the document, have very little time to cook or eat and even less money with which to buy food. The poor not only had little money with which to buy food, but poverty-stricken individuals could not buy cooking implements nor fuel either. In Promoting Nutrition, Mary Hinman Abel points out that families have very little money to use, so she built her cookbook upon the idea that a family of six only had 78 cents with which to buy food every day. The author says that the proposed audience for this book is a mother who either has no job or is a factory worker, proving that factory workers—unskilled laborers—were at the bottom of the economic
In regards to Celia Sanchez, she is the backbone of the family undoubtedly keeping the family together. Being an immigrant to the United States it is noticeable that her English barrier is hindering her progress as an American Resident to move forward and understand the language and paperwork. The lack of the understanding of the language opens doors for her to be exploited since she is part of a vulnerable population.
Julia Child tried to keep herself occupied in France but couldn’t find anything she loved to do. Finally she decided to take a class at Le Cordon Bleu for cooking. She did not like the treatment she was getting in the women’s only class. ...
Papa for example is a hardworking man and does what he must do to make ends meet. Esperanza’s family may represent the typical immigrant family; Hence, Esperanza’s parents are both hardworking, loving, supportive and very caring. Many immigrant parents are very selfless and give everything they have for their child to succeed. Esperanza is the Chicana who is fortunate enough to have this support and move ahead in life. Although she may not have the money, she has the support and Sandra Cisneros does a great job emphasizing on the importance of a community, of a family in order to
La Cosa Nostra Perhaps one of the most poignant moments in American cinema is the closing scene in the film “The Godfather” when Don Vito Corleone’s son Michael takes over his father’s position... and one of the most unforgettable moments, a severed horses’s head lies bloody in a man’s bed. It is this tradition and brutality that characterizes the Mafia, a secret Sicilian society that lives and functions just as much today on American soil as it did and does still in Italy. To understand this organized crime, one must begin to understand how it came to be organized in the first place. During the medieval times in Sicily, Arabs invaded the land and native Sicilians fled and took refuge in the hills. Some of these refugees formed a secret society that gave protection to the people in exchange for money. This group took their name, “Mafia” based on the Arabic word for refuge. In America today, one can hear it also be called “La Cosa Nostra”, or “This Thing of Ours.” In the 1700s,Wealthy people would receive a card with a black hand drawn on and if they did not pay the money, they could expect murder, theft, and violence. During the time Mussolini was ruling Italy, this secret society was under heavy persecution and many fled to the United States. “Don (term for the boss or head of a Mafia family) Vito Cascio Ferro fled to the United States in 1901 to escape arrest. He is known as the Father of American Mafia.” (La Cosa Nostra) Many Italian immigrants came to the United States through Ellis Island in New York, which is today the most important center of organized Mafia crime in the United States. The new American Mafia came to power during the Prohibition by organizing the sale of outlawed alcohol, but after Prohibition was revoked, the Mafia needed a new “racket.” During the war, the Mafia got government issued ration stamps and sold them on the black market. These days the Mafia is involved in running prostitution, unions, construction, and gambling. New York, also called the “City that never sleeps,” houses the Five Families of New York. These Families are highly influential and powerful crime families and each holds claim to certain “rackets.” The Five Families are: Gambino, Bonano, Lucchese, Colombo, and Genovese. While all people in the Mafia are required to maintain certain silence about the workings of the Family, a code of silence called “Omerta,” d...