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Understand Cuban American culture
Understand Cuban American culture
Understand Cuban American culture
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In the autobiography, Next Year in Cuba: A Cubano’s Coming-of-Age in America, Cuban American Gustavo Perez Firmat takes advantage of the upraising of sexuality as a social norm in the 90’s to accord sexuality as a prominent place in his autobiography. Throughout the text Figures of women are constantly used to illustrate the difficulty of a bicultural identity. Firmat compares American and Cuban women, which emphasize his struggle to define his identity.
Coming to the U.S at age 11 as an exile, Firmat misses out on his coming of age in Cuba, and because his book is written in the 90’s, a period where sexuality is upraising, he formulates his autobiography around sexuality. Firmat’s lack of control of hormones for woman, illustrates his lack
Sandra Cisneros “Never Marry a Mexican” and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are stories that reflect on the cultures in which the characters grew up in. In Never Marry, Clemencia, the narrator, reflects on her past sexual relations as well as her childhood. She speaks of her parents’ marriage and then transitions into her relationship with college professor and his son. In Oscar Wao, Yunior, the narrator, gives a second-hand retelling of Oscar’s experiences in New Jersey growing up as well as in the Dominican Republic. A person’s identity is largely influenced by their culture, this is especially the case in Hispanic cultures. The social constraints that these cultures place on social class, sexuality, and gender norms can be very detrimental to a person’s self-esteem.
Junot Diaz's Drown, a compilation of short stories, exemplifies how the high standard of masculinity within the Latino community can have a detrimental effect on males. These stories are told in the first person by a narrator called Yunior. The different stories are told against the background of The Dominican Republic and the United States. The narrator highlights the different challenges that he faces throughout his childhood and into his young adult life. During this period, he struggles to find his identity which is expected by every Latino. In the Dominican Republic, a man’s manhood is closely tied to his identity, and Yunior is no exception. While in the process of finding his identity, Yunior is challenged with abuse, poverty and the lure of drugs, which leads to his addiction and his becoming violent .…
At the beginning of the 1900s, there was a “sexual revolution” in New York City. During this time, sexual acts and desires were not hidden, but instead they were openl...
WEESR, KHATHERINE. “Tu no Eres Nada de Dominicano”: Unnatural Narration and De-Naturalizing Gender Consruction in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. “Journal Of Men’s Studies 22, no.2 (Spring2014 2014): 89-104. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 30,
#1.The thesis in “A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood” by Judith Ortiz Cofer is that because of the stories her grandmother told every afternoon when she was a child, her writing was heavily influenced and she learned what it was like to be a ‘Puerto Rican woman’. The thesis of the selection is stated in the first and last sentence of the second paragraph: “It was on these rockers that my mother, her sisters, and my grandmother sat on these afternoons of my childhood to tell their stories, teaching each other, and my cousin and me, what it was like to be a woman, more specifically, a Puerto Rican woman . . . And they told cuentos, the morality and cautionary tales told by the women in our family for generations: stories that became
Upon returning to the Dominican Republic after many years, Yolanda decides to take a trip across the island––something her family views as ridiculous. “‘This is not the states’ . . . ‘A woman just doesn’t travel alone in this country.” (9) This quote highlights the sexism inherent in Dominican society. Yolanda’s family is asserting that women are not individuals capable of taking care of themselves. On another hand, Yolanda’s close friendship with Mundín causes tensions as their mothers confront them about crossing gender lines. “My mother disapproved. The outfit would only encourage my playing with Mundín and the boy cousins. It was high time I got over my tomboy phase and started acting like a young lady señorita. ‘But it is for girls,’ . . . ‘boys don’t wear skirts.’” (228) This is an example of how Dominican societal norms and gender roles have impacted the sisters. Yolanda and Mundín were the only boy-girl playmates out of all the García children, yet this was frowned upon by both of their parents as to not impede the seemingly inevitable growth of Yolanda’s femininity, and conversely, Mundín’s masculinity. Moreover, this shows how societally-prescribed gender roles were instilled in Yolanda at a young age. However, this is not the only way in which women’s freedoms are
Wilkinson, S. (1999) ‘Homosexuality and the Repression of Intellectuals in “Fresa y chocolate” and “Mascaras”’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 18(1), 17-33, available: Jstor database [accessed 17 Oct 2012].
Rodriguez’s mother is left in a state of misery and isolation after her family leaves her. Left in Cuba without her children, Rodriguez’s mother has only her mother and husband. However, she suddenly finds a kitchen towel “smeared with another woman’s lipstick” and quickly
Guerra, Lillian. Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico: The Struggle for self, Community, and Nation, chs. 2-3 (Gainesville: U Press of Florida, 1998) 45-121.
Although it is ultimately revealed that Oscar and Yunior are close with each other, Yunior’s pure embodiment of the Dominican masculine is the complete antithesis of Oscar’s character, who is the opposite of anything that could describe Yunior. One good analogy to the hyper masculine identity of Yunior is to that of the personality of Trujillo, the repressive dictator of the Dominican Republic who oversaw the Haitian parsley massacre. Trujillo had a strong lust for women and a rather apparent tendency for violence, and as some sources (i.e. Masculinity after Trujillo, by Maja Horn) argue, the modern conception of masculinity in the country came to full bloom after his rein. Interestingly this was the period of time that Beli grew up in, and a substantial part of her childhood experience was suffering at the behest of Trujillo’s suppressive regime, and consequentially this contributed to her hefty and dominant
The eternal endeavor of obtaining a realistic sense of selfhood is depicted for all struggling women of color in Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” (1987). Anzaldua illustrates the oppressing realities of her world – one that sets limitations for the minority. Albeit the obvious restraints against the white majority (the physical borderland between the U.S. and Mexico), there is a constant and overwhelming emotional battle against the psychological “borderlands” instilled in Anzaldua as she desperately seeks recognition as an openly queer Mestiza woman. With being a Mestiza comes a lot of cultural stereotypes that more than often try to define ones’ role in the world – especially if you are those whom have privilege above the “others”.
La autora Puertoriqueña Rosario Ferré sin duda pertence a ese grupo the escritores que critícan la sociedad en la que les tocó vivír en sus creaciónes literárias. Ferré nació en Ponce, Puerto Rico la ciudad mas grande y poderosa del sur de la isla. Su familia es una de las mas importante economicamente y politicamente poderosa. Su padre fue gobernador de la isla durante los años del 1968 al 1972. Como todas las mujeres en esa época se casó y comenzó una familia, destinada a una vida como dama elegante y ociosa. Pero se dió cuenta que su vida pertenecía a la literatura. Ella rompió un taboo y molde cultural, que convertía a las mujeres de clase media alta, en muñecas. Esa generación de mujeres exigiendo cambios en la sociedad se encontraban en el medio de la revolución femenina. Cualquier mujer que quisiera cambiar su vida o trabajar era considerada extraña o loca. Esta opreción se convirtió en su inspiración. Ferré nos comunica a travez de esta novela, la realidad de la mujer puertoriqueña a mediados de siglo. En La Bella Durmiente, Rosario Ferré muestra la mujer como sujeto y objeto. Esta obra es un manisfiesto de los derechos de la mujer y del inconformismo femenino que eventualmente lleva a la mujer a rechazar la realidad. Analizare y demonstrare por medio de este ensayo, los papeles que le toca jugar (a la mujer) en esta sociedad, la corrupcion moral y social que le rodea y su reacción ante todo esto resultando en un trágico final.
Bergmann, Emilie. "Abjection and Ambiguity: Lesbian Desire in Bemberg's "Yo, la peor de todas." Hispanisms and Homosexualities. Ed. Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.
Whether it 's for the music, people or food, Cuba is a popular and interesting place to visit. Cuba is located between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. At 42,426 square miles, Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean and the 105th largest country in the world. Cuba has a population of 11.1 million. Out of that 11.1 million, Havana is home to 2.1 million (Nation Facts). The official language of Cuba is Spanish, but English and French are spoken throughout the country. The most practiced religion of Cuba is Roman Catholicism, but a large number of people follow the Afro-Cuban and Protestant religions. The president of Cuba is currently Raúl Castro, which is Fidel Castro 's brother. The currency of Cuba is the Cuban peso (Cuba).
Pérez Jr., Louis A. On Becoming Cuban. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999.