As soon as I arrived to the Perez family reunion, I immediately felt out of place. Since my family and I were the only ones not wearing the designated family reunion shirts, we stuck out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless, we received a warm welcome from the hostess who was my step-dad’s cousin. Although my stepdad, Shawn, has been in our family for a few years, we had never met any of his outside family. We’d heard the stories about my step-grandma and her fifteen brothers and sisters but we were excited to finally meet them. The first cousin that we encountered commented how she hadn’t seen Shawn in fifteen years. That would probably explain why she thought my sister and I were his daughters. I thought this was a strange assumption at first seeing as he is dark complected and my sisters and I are blondes. The longer we stayed, however, the more I realized that nearly all of the children below 25 were blond or near …show more content…
blond. This fact was most notably highlighted when they took the generational pictures. The first picture was of the sixteen original siblings that were all born in Mexico. All of them could easily be identified as Latino. In the next picture, where everyone was middle-aged, there were fewer people with black hair and more with brown. Then for the picture of the grandchildren, very few would at first glance appear to have Mexican heritage. I thought this was an interesting example of how when you immigrate to America, you could possibly lose part of your culture. There were still plenty of examples of how they were keeping their heritage alive though.
It was very evident in the food, as they served tamales, enchiladas, and tacos, just to name a few. While we were eating, a lady was going around to everyone and asking if they wanted to buy a raffle ticket. Wanting to make a good impression, my mom bought one for each of us even though she had no idea what the raffle actually entailed. We eventually forgot about the tickets until someone announced it was time to bring out the chicken. Unbeknownst to us, the tickets we had bought corresponded to numbers on a large grid that had a large cage around it. My family and I exchanged awkward glances, but we seemed to be the only ones there that thought this was even slightly out of the ordinary. My grandma explained to us that the number that the chicken pooped on was the winner of the raffle. Everyone gathered around the cage to watch this spectacle. Only about thirty seconds later, the crowd erupted in cheers. We had a winner. I didn’t win but the experience was
enough. The last event of the day was the auction. Family members donated homemade goods that were then auctioned off to raise money for the next year’s reunion. One of the top earning sellers was a jar of Uncle Pancho’s homemade salsa, which fetched $60 all on its own. After everything was sold, it was time to go home. I was dreading this part because it did not take long to realize that they were a family that liked to hug, something which I cannot stand. After I escaped and left I realized I should not have been intimidated or nervous to meet them. They were family, after all.
Being a Hispanic have impacted all my entire life; I lived 15 years of my life in Mexico I love being there because most part of my family live in Nuevo Laredo, I was cursing my last months of 8th grade and one day my mom told me that she was thinking about send me here to the U.S to start learn English; since I’m a U.S citizen and I didn't know the language of my country, I accepted. The most hard prove was live without having my mom at my side, since I live with my aunt now; when the days passed here in the U.S I started to depressed myself because I missed so much my house and all my family, one day in the middle of the night I call my mom crying and I told her that I really want go back to Mexico, but she didn’t take into account my desire my mom just explained me that it will be the best for my future and with the time I will be thankful with her for don’t let me go back. My mom, and my grandmother are the ones who motivates me to be a better student. Actually I’m in dual enrollment and I have taken AP classes; sometimes is hard for me talk, read or write in another language that the one I was accustomed but, every time I fail I get up and persist until I’m able to do what I want.
On the night of Saturday, February 1, 2014, I sat down with my grandfather, David Latta, to conduct an interview with him. He currently lives in Clarkston, Michigan, in the newly refurbished basement in my mother's house, along with my step-father, sister, and her son. One could say that my mother's household is quite the crowded nest, with four generation living under one roof. The perspective my grandfather obtains from living in such an atmosphere, is not only something I kept in mind while conducting this interview, but something that guided my questions.
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
They had three children all mixed with white, black, Mexican, and Irish traits. Danzy had a clear understanding of her parent’s marriage. They married with hopes that they would “snub the history that divided them and create an ahistorical utopia…” (Senna 33). That is not how the marriage resulted, however. There was physical and later verbal abuse. There was alcoholism and disrespect. Friends and family believed that the divorce was “the ugliest divorce in Boston’s history” (Senna 32). Danzy understood that was the belief because of the beauty that a marriage between a white woman and a black man could promise. From the outside, their family was described by “domestic coziness, the pedestrian normality only underscoring the young family’s literary and multicultural exoticism” (Senna 20). I believe that Carl’s Senna mistreatment of his wife and children stemmed from his misgivings of his conflicted identity. It did not help that he was skeptical of whites and married a white woman with “blue eyes [and] blue blood” (Senna 13). Kelly argues that he is that way because of his “abandonment by his black mother and the absence of an authentic experience of blackness.” By the end of the memoir, Senna’s father has remarried and discovered that all lines follow that his mother did not lie to him in the telling that Francisco Jose Senna was his father. He seems
The novel “The Color of Family Ties”, by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian, through their research they found out that the ratio of disorganized family for Black and Latino/a families are higher than White families. That white families are more nuclear, which means a couple with their dependent children. In contrast, Black and Latino/a families has a high ratio that they often live with their extended families (Naomi and Sarkisian 47). This novel ties in to the “Looking for Work” novel because Gerstel and Sarkisian shows a research regarding how Latino families are disorganized, and the way how Mexican families lives are just like Gary’s family, the extended family. We know that Gary’s family are disorganized, but nevertheless, Gary has extended families members who he lives together with. Gary’s family showed solidarity love by just help each other out and spending time together. “We ran home for my bike and when my sister found out that we were going swimming, she started to cry because she didn’t have fifteen cents but only an empty Coke bottle”(24 Soto). This is Gary’s cousin Debra who needs fifteen cents to go to the swimming pool, of course Gary and his friend helped Debra out. Other time that showed Gary’s family love is that Gary’s mother always let Gary’s play with his friends outside, not because she does not love Gary is because
Sandy not only learned through the conversations of the adults around him the importance of skin color, he witnessed a number of events that cemented the notion. Sandy’s somewhat wild Aunt, Har...
Much of my family still lives in the area where my great-grandfather settled and started his church. My great-uncle now pastors his father’s church and lots of family members attend his church regularly. My grandma’s family has always been big on getting the family back together, and they hold a family reunion every two years in Blue Island. I have only had the privilege of being a part of a couple Contreras family reunions, but when I have been, the overwhelming sense of family and inclusion stood out to me. My Mexican family taught me what it means to love family unconditionally and it doesn’t even matter if we didn’t grow up together, we are still family. No matter what life throws your way, you always will have family, and I hope to embody this sense of family in my own someday. My family has shaped who I am as a person, and prepared me to be the type of person that has a positive impact on the people around me. I believe that I can have a positive impact on my fellow students at Southeastern
As Kirst-Ashman and Hull Jr (2012, pp. 453-454) reminds us, “the family is central to Hispanic culture and is hierarchical in structure. That is the father is the primary authority figure (Devore & Schlesinger, 1996). Furthermore, scholars inform us that many Hispanic fathers appear somewhat aloof from the family, especially the children as it is the father’s role to pursue instrumental roles such as earning a living. Often, this results in the father being less likely to express emotional support (Kirst-Ashman & Hull Jr., p. 454). Understanding these concepts of the Hernandez family culture as well as asking questions about their family members depicted on the genogram can aid me to become more informed. This can be a very positive step in the right direction in building a relationship of mutual respect and trust as in our respective roles as client and social work professional enhancing our ability to work together to determine the best intervention
As a traditional, collectivistic cultural group, the Latino population is believed to adhere deeply to the value of familismo. (Arditti, 2006; Calzada, 2014). Familism is an emphasis on the importance of the family unit over values of autonomy and individualism”. (Santistaben, 2012). Family is considered to be the top priority in the Latino culture. Comparatively, at times, this isn’t true of our busy, work devoted western culture. In western culture we think of our family in a nuclear sense made up of a: mom, dad, and siblings. Conversely, Hispanic culture focuses on the whole extended family including aunts, uncles, grandparent, and cousins. Their culture believes having close connections with the entire extended family benefits the development of their children. The entire family helps the child by giving them differing levels of social and emotional support. (American Home Resolutions,
I often have a difficult time describing my situation to others, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. Three divorces have taught me what successful and not so successful relationships look like. My younger sister with autism has taught me empathy, compassion, and patience. My step siblings have been there for me when did not have to be and for that I am grateful. No matter the family situation, every family has an undeniable sense of pride. For example, my family, most of whom were born in Ireland, throw the loudest St. Patrick’s day parties and keep our Irish flags up all through March. We are proud of our incredibly fair skin and abundance of freckles and redheads. My family’s pride is similar to that of Aunt Alexandra’s and her obsession with heredity and the certain “family streaks” in the novel’s Maycomb county. Scout mentions said streaks in chapter 13. “Everybody in Maycomb, it seemed, had a streak: a drinking streak, a gambling streak, a mean streak, a funny streak,” (Lee 129). I again feel Scout and I could relate to each other through our unique family situations, hers of course being her family’s cook Calpurnia and her neighbor Miss Maudie as her mother figures. Another unique family are the Pritchett’s on the show Modern Family. I was elated when this show came out because, while dramatized for comedic effect, it is a break from the straight, white, “we all get along fine” families usually depicted on TV.
The family goes through struggles, such as their son having dyslexia, their daughter joining private school, and George trying to find his biological father. Many of the statements and visuals portrayed are those that negatively illustrate how Mexicans and Cubans act.... ... middle of paper ... ... Social Cognition (2008): 314-332. Browne. "
After reading different articles and learning more about African American culture, it made me want to find out more about my own family culture. There are different traditions that are pasted down in generations, which could have been a part of African culture that we don’t realize such as parenting styles. I don’t remember hearing too many stories about my past relatives growing up, so I had to find out more on my family experiences in the south. Also, I wanted to see how spirituality played a roll in my family choices. My goal in this paper is to show how I got a better understanding of the reason my family could be structured the way it is now.
I am a young Latina professional attempting to set forth a good precedent for my sisters, and be the best human I can be. I am an immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico. First to graduate high school and soon will be the first to graduate with two bachelor degrees from University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Latin American Studies and Political Science. I am a fashion lover who loves reading and knowing everything about social sciences and random trivia. Bad at every sport, but does not kill my motivation to try everything, learn about it, and try it at least once. I have been in and out between Jalisco and Nevada my whole life, but made a permanent move 6 years ago for school.
The Family Tree My family story took place in the middle of the seventeenth century, when Mexico was still part of Texas, in a town now known as Kerrville. This land has been in my family for centuries and still remains in our hands. There under the hills of my ancestors, around a camp fire surrounded by my tios, tias, and primos, my grandfather Guadalupe Morales would lead us into a world that we could see with our heart and feel like we did the heat of that fire. This was the same story passed down from generation to generation through depressions and wars about slavery and strength, faith, and perseverance. It was a story of victory and family.
There are many peers who have made a difference in my life, but when discussing this, there is one particular individual who has a distinction. Her name is Jalynn Sierra Borders, one of my best friends in the world. Jalynn has not only challenged me academically, but she keeps me on my toes in whatever I do, and I try to do the same with her. We met in 6th grade, and from watching her mature as a student, she helped me mature as well. My friends and I are constantly in academic competition with each other which is why we are such great friends and successful in the classroom and community. Jalynn truly inspires me to do my best academically at school, and I am grateful to her that she pushes me when I make that ‘C’ on a math test. She’s