My Uncle Ruben's House
Most people can’t locate Galveston, Texas, on a map, and those who can think of a dirty beach and Dr. Pepper’s national headquarters. You could ask a thousand people, and almost none of them would be able to find something special about G-Town, but I can. Galveston is the home of 156 of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. There was a rumor going around G-town that everyone with a Mexican background was related to the Moreno’s.
I spent three weeks every summer, along with Christmas and spring break, at my Uncle Ruben’s house in Galveston. I heard stories all the time about the first encounter I had with him and his house. I was 18 months old when I took my first trip out of New York. As soon as I stepped in the door of my uncle’s two-story home, covered by chipped green paint, my mother’s eight sisters surrounded me, along with her mother, her 18 first cousins, 10 second cousins, and her two aunts, and the most important man in her life, her uncle Ruben. He was the first person to hold me, and legend has it that he nicknamed me Seesaw because my head was huge and it would make me sway left to right, causing me to fall every so often.
My Uncle Ruben spent 26 years working two full-time jobs. During the day he worked as a longshoreman, unloading heavy crates from the banana boats. At night he did maintenance work the local gas company. He supported 12 kids, eight of whom were his and the rest nephews and nieces, including my mother. My uncle used to say that it didn’t matter if you were his daughter, his cousin, or his niece, if you were family it was all the same.
My uncle’s house sits on the edge of a working-class Mexican neighborhood six blocks away from the beach. In Galveston, the economic differences from neighborhood to neighborhood are extreme. On one side of the island there are huge Victorian mansions separated by big green lawns and perfectly paved driveways. My uncle’s house is not one of those houses; it is marked by a chained-link fence and a dried-out bed of flowers. When looking at the house from the outside, it is hard to tell what kind of family lives there. There are no flags hanging from the windows, but there are toys in the front yard.
Jackie and his family started out their new life in a small house on Pepper Street in the suburbs of Pasadena. The neighborhood was a mix of all kinds of people, there was some Mexicans living there a few of the poorer whites but mostly blacks, and even though Jackie lived during t...
The narrative enables Douglass to flaunt his hard-earned education. As stated before, his diction brings pathos to his work. He describes his experiences in a way that lets his audience feel the indignity of being owned by another person. For example, D...
Once there was, as never before, a hurricane of great might and strength. As never before, there once was a hurricane of many names: storm, cyclone, tempest, typhoon, and flood. Yet it has lived on in history as the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Humanity has glorified and immortalized the hurricane. The Great Galveston Hurricane has been the subject of numerous articles, novels, plays, and poems, as well as four major nonfiction studies (Longshore). It is truly one of hurricane lore’s greatest of storms.
“Home is where the heart is.” In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops this famous statement to depict what a “home” really represents. What is a home? Is it a house with four walls and a roof, the neighborhood of kids while growing up, or a unique Cleaver household where everything is perfect and no problems arise? According to Cisneros, we all have our own home with which we identify; however, we cannot always go back to the environment we once considered our dwelling place. The home, which is characterized by who we are, and determined by how we view ourselves, is what makes every individual unique. A home is a personality, a depiction of who we are inside and how we grow through our life experiences. In her personal, Cisneros depicts Esperanza Cordero’s coming-of-age through a series of vignettes about her family, neighborhood, and personalized dreams. Although the novel does not follow a traditional chronological pattern, a story emerges, nevertheless, of Esperanza’s search to discover the meaning of her life and her personal identity. The novel begins when the Cordero family moves into a new house, the first they have ever owned, on Mango Street in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza is disappointed by the “small and red” house “with tight steps in front and bricks crumbling in places” (5). It is not at all the dream-house her parents had always talked about, nor is it the house on a hill that Esperanza vows to one day own for herself. Despite its location in a rough neighborhood and difficult lifestyle, Mango Street is the place with which she identifies at this time in her life.
Growing up, in a Mexican-American home, one of the first things that my siblings and I learned from home and social gatherings was that family is crucial. At family reunions, we would catch up with cousins that we did not get a chance to see in several months sometimes years. Most of my cousins are around my age, which made family reunions even better. Now, that most of us in the extended family have graduated high school, some began to go get a higher education, and
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.
At first Michael was not a part of the family’s music group (Jefferson 57). He was too young to perform with his brothers. “When he was about three years old, he started singing the stuff he heard his brothers rehearsing” (Von Drehle). Michael was born to sing. Michael’s music career started when he joined the Jackson 5. The group consisted of Michael and four of his brothers: Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon (Jefferson 41-44). Michael was the star of the Jackson 5. He was an extremely talented singer and dancer. He learned how to dance by imitating ...
Frederick Douglass was a noted writer, abolitionist, orator, and former slave; in fact, his oratory ability was so good that there were those who were among the most ardent opponents of slavery who could not believe that he had been a slave. His best known work is Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, a book of eleven chapters and an appendix. The purpose of the book was to provide a well-written account of a slave’s life for northern readers who might not yet be convinced of the abolitionist cause. Thus, the book was both a memoir and a polemic against the institution of slavery.
In the novel The Tortilla Curtain, written by T.C Boyle the reader is presented with two distinctive families who both shared the same dream—the American Dream, without even taken any notice of it. Boyle separates both families by giving them a different form of life styles distinguishing them from one another. In one side living at the top of the hills we have the Mossbacher’s, who live in a wealthy community; at the bottom of the hill the Rincon’s live out in the open—literally. This indicates that the Mossbacher’s represent the wealthy and the Rincon’s represent the illegal immigrants in America. Through the use of symbolism such as the car accident, the coyote and the wall, T.C Boyle unfolds the unattainability of the American Dream for
When you think about family, what is the first thing that comes to mind? If you only thought about your parents or close relatives, then you may have been caught in an “individual vs. family” paradox. Nearly every culture considers family important, but “many Americans have never even met all of their cousins” (Holmes & Holmes, 2002, p. 19). We say we are family oriented, but not caring to meet all of our extended family seems to contradict that. Individual freedoms, accomplishments, and goals are all American ideals that push the idea of individualism.
There was an article in The New York Times called “The Changing American Family” by Natalie Angier that illustrates this point. The writer discussed the way in which the typical family structure has morphed into the many versions that can be seen today. Through her research, Angier noted that “anthropologists have traditionally used the term ‘fictive kin’ to separate such relationships from ‘true’ kinship based on blood or law, but many researchers have recently pushed back against that distinction, arguing that self-constructed families are no less real or meaningful than conventional ones.” (23) Personally, I think that if someone acts like family, then they become my family. These “fictive kin” do not exist to me. The title of a family member must be
Schmalleger, F. (2009), Prentice Hall, Publication. Criminal Justice Today: An introductory Text for the 21st century
...embered for making a large impact on literature and censorship. He isn’t just remembered for literature, but also the violent scandals he participated in. Through the Marquis’ life and even afterwards, he is remembered for his sexual openness, libertine values, and the stress he put on the beliefs on censorship of the period.
The idea of family is different from person to person. Regardless of the differences, everyone’s family is unique and special in their own way. No one can judge or discriminate against people for their meaning and interpretation of what a family looks like. For example, family may have two parents; one parent; or no parents (since these are brief phrases, semi-colons shouldn't be used). The variation and differences between families makes culture and society so diverse. Family does not have limitations or boundaries (true). As long as the definition of family contains the qualities of unconditional love, and endless support, help, and guidance; all different families (awk) will be able to succeed and achieve a greater feeling of happiness and a sense of belonging and acceptance.
place I would have to go to before and after school. I have always loved my