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History of hispanic immigration to the united states
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In 1964, Leticia was born in Chavinda which is a very small town in Mexico. Leticia had a very difficult life growing up because her dad left to go to the United States to work but eventually he passed away and her mother would always be working in never had time for Leticia and her siblings so her grandparents would be the one taking care of her and her siblings, so she called them her parents. Leticia would also start working so she can help her mother with paying bills because he stopped going to school in middle school because they couldn’t afford money so she could continue school. Back in the 1960s, it was very easy to cross the border because there weren’t any policies there to stop you and there were better ways to cross like you could have someone else’s passport that you look pretty similar to you and they would just let you go with no …show more content…
But Leticia would take a class where they teach her English and she was working at a Mexican restaurant. When her husband and her had kids and they just balanced the days of taking care of the kids so they would both be doing what they wanted but it turned to be difficult so she stopped going to classes to take care of her kids she stop working to take care of her kids because she didn’t want to miss anything of her kids growing up because like they say kids grow up really fast and she didn’t want to regret. But there were some moments that she did regret not continue English classes because in the United States all you speak is English and she loves making new friends but she doesn’t know how to speak the language she always feels left out when people are talking around her because she feels like they’re talking bad about
The excerpt from “First muse” by Julia Alvarez is a story about her Dominican cultural background. Alvarez has been looked different based on her ability to speak English. Due to Alvarez not have a “Dominican education and her ability to speak English” bullied and teased. As a child Alvarez had told her mom that she does not want to just be the stay home wife who just cooks and cleans like every other wife she wants she does to be different, she wants to be more than just a stay home wife when she get older. It’s ok to know more than one language, but at the same time to should always stay truth to your cultural background/inherent. Just because Alvarez knows English does not make her a different Dominican girl because she knows Spanish too.
The girls’ father wanted them to have a normal and respectable American life because of what they had had to struggle through. In the novel, the Garcia sisters see Spanish as the first language, “representing their refuge” (72) and English as a difficult second language. To them America is a new and foreign place, completely dismissing the potential dangers that await them there. After arriving, they soon realize their struggle with comprehending the English language show their lack of comfortability in their new home which is socially harmful. Their accents in particular are constant reminders to the sisters and to others that they are strangers in a peculiar land. Their accents resulted in them being ridiculed such as when Carla was taunted by some boys who mimicked her accent saying “Eh-stop! ...Plees eh-stop” (153). Since the girls could not control their accents, they would have to focus on their appearance. The girls do their best to fit into society by talking and acting the correct way and developed a sense of using hand motions to describe what they were talking
Julia Alvarez wrote the novel “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”. Alvarez, (a Dominican-American novelist) was born in New York City. Her story is about four sisters (The Garcia family) who were living an established, upper class life in the Dominican Republic. They were forced to flee from the Dominican Republic to the United States due to their father’s opposition to Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. The Garcia family were forced to face the challenges that came along with being an immigrant family in a foreign land. In her novel “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,” Alvarez highlights the challenges of immigration, cultural readjustments and family conflicts.
Ruíz, Vicki, and Sánchez Korrol Virginia E. "Huerta, Dolores." Latinas in the United States: A
Tan also reflects on how her broken English with whom she shares with her mother is her mother tongue, and how this broken English has shaped who she is today. I am able to identify with Tan’s feelings as my grandmother who is a native Puerto Rican, has her own “mother tongue” as she still speaks in broken English. After my mother passed away when I was three, my grandmother moved in to help raise my sisters and I as we were very young. My grandmother used the same broken English Tan’s mother’s had used and my feelings towards it mirrored Tan’s at an early age. I remember because my father worked during the day my grandmother had to attend parent teacher conferences in his place. As I was still too young, my grandmother dragged me along and made me wait outside. We had waited in line for about two hours before finally being called for my conference. After a few minutes in, one of my teachers walks outside of the classroom and asks me if I know Spanish, to which I reply no. As the teacher walks back into the room I hear a resounding “Ma’am we must reschedule…there are other parents waiting and we cannot understand you, and we are pretty sure you
She felt foreign and different from everybody else; she did not feel as if she belonged there. Now imagine how an immigrant would feel in a whole new country with a different culture and language. Their sociable abilities would definitely be at a low point to where they hardly talk to people, due to such a contrasting and new environment. In correlation to that, Nancy Rodriguez-Lora, a bilingual clinical therapist in Goshen, states “dealing with the issues that come with transitioning to a life in a new culture, called acculturative stress, can be tough enough for legal immigrants and doubly so for those lacking papers”(The Elkhart Truth). It has basically become a fact that immigrants will deal with social issues wherever they might go to.
childhood and renewed life style were she learned how to distinguish one language to another
...s all she says pointing at the idea that English teachers have the power to remove the unwillingness and resistance from their Puerto Rican students by being models of successful avid English language learners and users themselves. This is done by inspiring a proud feeling to their students for their first language, Spanish, and promoting the use of this language first so that they can appreciate and better learn a second not because of a hidden political agenda, but because it would add more to their overall knowledge. This is a great way to see English, not in the political sense but in a broader enriching and fun way that can expand further more outside of what is Spanish and add a feeling of self fulfillment given the idea that the individual is more prepared to communicate to an even bigger amount of other human beings.
To function in a new country, the immigrants have to learn the country 's language. This is why the parents in Pat Mora 's “Immigrants” focus on speaking to their children in “thick English” (line 7). They do not think it is necessary to teach their children their own native language, instead they “whisper in their dark parent bed” (lines 10-11). They do this to make their children fit in;
In this summary the author Tanya Barrientos is explaining how hard it is be different. In the beginning of the summary Barrientos explained how people automatically assume that she is Latina. She grew up in an English-speaking world. Her parents are born and raised in Guatemala but she moved to the United States at the age of three. When her parents came to the United States of America they stopped speaking English immediately. Her parents wanted her to read, talk, and write only in English. She felt like she was the only one who needed to learn how to speak Latino, even though she looks like she can already. In the summary she went on saying that she was trying to fit in and become a regular person so other Latinas won’t judge her. All she
And l don't understand what the teachers was saying. So l didn't do anything. And l was 13 years old, and i also know english because i had to work hard to learn english because english is not my first language, so like i say it was hard to learn english. The best story is when i was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago. The story is the best because i relate this story, Esmeralda is most like me, like immigrant, and she had to learn English like me. She remembers me when i come to america and how i come to high school. She remembers me when i didn't know much English when i could speak english at all. I got nervous when i have to speak it front of people. I like Esmeralda because we both rated. We both immigrant. We are both to learn English and how to pronounce it. “ Esmeralda Santiago moved to brooklyn from puerto Rican with her mother and several of her brother and sisters when she was 13 leaving behind her father and live in the country. After being assigned to a class for kids with learning disabilities because she cannot speak english well” Esmeralda movies a lot, and when her family movies and she changes school, she is given the chance to write her own ticker. I like Esmeralda because we are both come to america. And we are both were 13 years old when l and Esmeralda come to U.S “ she was 13 leaving
He also talks about if his teachers did not push him to speak English he would not have learned the language as easy. He states, “ I would have felt much less afraid. I would have delayed- for long postponed?- having to learn the language of public society” (Rodriguez 4). His teachers forced him to learn the public language, but that also encouraged his family to learn too. Now knowing the public language, they speak it more fluently and regularly. Rodriguez vocalizes “ Most of all I needed to hear my mother and father speak to me in a moment of seriousness in broken-suddenly heartbreaking- English” (Rodriguez 6). He also states “ But I had no place to escape to with Spanish” (Rodriguez 22). Rodriguez feels his family no longer carries a connection with their private language and he no longer has a safe place to speak Spanish. Because Rodriguez realises this he states “No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and the troubling knowledge of our public separateness” (Rodriguez 8). Since his family invited the public language in they have let their private language out. His family no longer has this feeling of
Anzaldua was a Mexican descent, but born and raised in Texas. I believe she included this in her essay on purpose for readers to understand that her situation was not by choice. This sense of helplessness will help gain readers’ sympathy. She was brought up in a community that speaks both English and Spanish, English while in school and Chicano while at home. However, this was scrutinized by the respective groups as they were unable to
No longer were they living in a cramped house with one room and dirt floors, but now had running water and modern appliances. I couldn’t imagine how a mother would feel trying to cook on a new foreign gas stove versus just using an open flame like back in her native land. Additionally, grocery shopping was new and foreign as was the American currency which made it extremely difficult to cook and provide food for the family. This was a completely new culture and way of life. Not speaking the native language in a country is always an issue because it makes it very difficult to interact with those around you and contribute to society. No employer wants to hire a person who can’t speak English, which made it extremely difficult to find a job even though many of them wanted to work. The families tried to take English as a second language classes, but the documentary stated it would be a few years until they were proficient enough to contribute to society. The difficulty to interact with others must have been frustrating, as it is a key part of fitting in the American culture. In America, they would have to find a new way of life, and get accustomed to Urban America. Each of these factors must have been on the minds of the family, and would have contributed to the sense of fear and wariness these people must have had in their new life in
In “The Language of Silence,” Kingston was a Chinese immigrant who was timid in her early years of school. The thought of having her voice heard in class made her feel insecure to read or even shed a word outside of class. Kingston mentions, “When I went to kindergarten and had to speak English for the first time, I became silent.”(167) In other words, because she couldn’t speak English fluently, she began to use silence to protect herself from sounding “dumb.” She knew that the English language that came out of her mouth, differed from everyone else's. For children who possess another language, challenges will be presented in school because not only we have to learn the material, but we have to learn an unknown language to us. Perhaps just like Kingston, I struggled to find my place in the English language. When I was little, Spanish was the language I dominated which made me feel really smart. My feelings changed when English was introduced to my life. I encountered myself in a puzzled world, with beautiful pieces because English is a beautiful language, but I just didn’t