Prayers for the stolen is about a young heroic woman by the name of Ladydi Garcia Martinez. She was a young, intelligent and gregarious woman who lived in Guerrero, Mexico. Her life was very unstable because during this time women and young girls were often taken and placed into human trafficking. In her earlier years, her mother was forced to dress her as an ugly girl or as a boy so that she would not draw attention to the human traffickers. They were like terrorist to the land. Parents would do the strangest things in order to portray their children as undesirable targets. Sometimes the young girls would have to hide in holes in order to not be captured by the Human Traffickers. Unfortunately, Ladydi lived in a deadly drug war where tomorrow …show more content…
was not always promised. In Guerrero, the drug lords were the kings of the city. Throughout this time the rural area periodically held school when they were able to compel a teacher from the big city to instruct a classroom. Her family did everything to protect one another.
While her father went to the United States to find a better place to live for his family, her mother became hopeless and took care of her and awaited his arrival. Like any other teenager Ladydi and friends pondered on ways to escape her situation. She often fantasized of a future that did not consist of concerning herself with basic survival such as safety. Ladydi imagined her future as carefree, harmonious and unified. One day Paula (Ladydi’s friend) and Ladydi were together when Paula was abducted. For some reason they didn’t take Ladydi they only took Paula. When Ladydi was 16 she was hired to be a nanny for Domingo family in Acapulco, Mexico. During her stay with the Domingo family she romanticized with the gardener, Julio. Regrettably, Ladydi’s past followed her when she arrives in Acapulco. On the journey to Acapulco, Ladydi’s friend’s brother, Michael, compromises her safety by including her in a drug transaction. Due to her transaction with a drug lord she was unlawfully accused of being a spectator and accomplice to the murder. At the moment of her arrest she had truly realized what had happened to her friend Paula. Paula had become a slave mistress for a drug lord and they had completely dismantled her mind. Although Ladydi was wrongfully convicted and underaged she was immediately sent to women’s prison. Contrary to popular belief prison was slightly more of a stable environment. She was empowered and educated
through the programs provided by the facility. Fortunately, Ladydi’s mother was able to get her out of prison. She came back to Guerrero as a new woman. Through trials and tribulations, Ladydi realized that the true meaning of life and prosperity. Although Ladydi, her mother and her friends face many challenges they are determined to cope with their situation and discover the pursuit of happiness. Rita Ladydi’s mother mentioned in the book to not ask god for things that you want because he will not give it to you; therefore, the message in this movie is to not pray for happy ending for their family but to hope that they configure a happy ending for themselves. Reading this book really opened my eyes to what is going on in other countries. It is identical to what they believe is happening in the U.S regarding the young girls going missing every day. They believe that they are taken and sold in to human trafficking or as sex slavary. These young girls are possibly taken by foreign men who take them back to their country. These men know and realize that once they take them back to their country, the police in the U.S will stop looking for them. This give them lead way to be able to commit the crime and get away with it.
In Sandra Benitez’s novel, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, we get to know the lives and struggles of the residents of a small town in Mexico. Each character faces a conflict that affects the course of his or her life. The conflict I chose was the conflict that Marta was with her child and how her anger about the child made her do things she wished she could take back. It all starts with Marta and her sister. Marta is pregnant and thinks she can't take care of the kid so she wants an abortion. Then once Choyo Marta’s sister husband found out he insisted to take the kid once he is born. So then Marta decided to take care of the baby until it was born but then after time went by the husband of Choyo said that he wouldn't be able to take the kid because he was already going to have a child with Choyo. Once Marta was told this she let her anger get the best of her which then lead her to
It is influenced by her grandmother, Esperanza Ortega’s life story and her experience from when she fled from Mexico to California. While it may be a fictional story, it is personally inspired by a close family member who lived through similar challenges. In addition, I appreciate how the author has done extensive historically based social research to allow the story to be as authentic as possible. Moreover, I chose this novel because it takes place during the Great Depression period focusing on the agricultural labor camps. I have no previous knowledge specifically in this area, and would like to learn and understand how this certain place and era affected people’s lives, society, environment, and
The themes explored in the novel illustrate a life of a peasant in Mexico during the post-revolution, important themes in the story are: lack of a father’s role model, death and revenge. Additionally, the author Juan Rulfo became an orphan after he lost
In “Confetti Girl”, the narrator disagrees with her father and questions how much he cares about her and in “Tortilla Girl”, the narrator questions if her mother was taking her into account of her new plans. Tension is shown to be caused in the stories “Confetti Girl” and “Tortilla Sun” due to the parent and narrator not having the same point of view. In this story, a young girl named Izzy lives alone with her mother. One day, the mother surprises her by explaining that she is going to Costa Rica to do some research, and that Izzy is going to her grandmother’s house while she is away.
Neglect and the lack of care from society is affecting the life of Theresa Flores. As young girls they are being forgotten by their community and society as human beings who need to be cared for as they grow and heal from the traumatic events in their life. The stories of Theresa and Rachel prove events of human trafficking have taken place in the United States during the 1980’s-2000’s and are currently occurring. In The Slave Across the Street by Theresa Flores, Theresa informs the reader of her experiences with neglect and the effects these experiences have on her. As Theresa begins to show signs of physical abuse, the adults in her schools and community are taking no notice in fear the results would affect themselves. Theresa says, “By doing nothings, turning a blind eye, they
Desert Blood, a book by Alicia Gaspar De Alba, is considered to be a mystery novel that covers a seventeen year crime wave. Specifically, the author has focused on the Juarez femicides issue whereby femicide is defined as the murder of females just because they are women. However, in this case, the Juarez victims are the poor and young Mexican females that were murdered because they were poor. The protagonist of this story is Ivon Villa, a professor that focuses on women studies while the antagonists are Silvia Pasquel, Natalia Stregnard and Zabaleta. This paper will therefore focus on the plot summary and analysis of the novelwhile pinpointing the main parts of the story.
Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth chapter, namely the domestic abuse scene, functions as a pivotal point in the Mother Tongue as it helps her to define herself.
This novel is a story of a Chicano family. Sofi, her husband Domingo together with their four daughters – Esperanza, Fe, Caridad, and Loca live in the little town of Tome, New Mexico. The story focuses on the struggles of Sofi, the death of her daughters and the problems of their town. Sofi endures all the hardships and problems that come her way. Her marriage is deteriorating; her daughters are dying one by one. But, she endures it all and comes out stronger and more enlightened than ever. Sofi is a woman that never gives up no matter how poorly life treats her. The author- Ana Castillo mixes religion, super natural occurrences, sex, laughter and heartbreak in this novel. The novel is tragic, with no happy ending but at the same time funny and inspiring. It is full of the victory of the human spirit. The names of Sofi’s first three daughters denote the three major Christian ideals (Hope, Faith and Charity).
In the story the protagonist, Charity Meyers wakes up in an ambulance and discovers that she has been taken. She follows all of her training and does exactly what she is told to do by her kidnappers. There are several kidnappers who are named Dr. Reyes, Dr. Lanyon, and another person who does not reveal himself until later in the book. Naturally, the reader is very angry at the kidnappers for doing such a horrible thing to a child. The author then takes the story to a place no one ever expected him to.
Beli’s impulses allow her to ignore the fact that falling atomically in love with the Gangster, a man she meets in a luxurious nightclub, is wrong. In a world where no one gives her such feeling, the Gangster makes Beli feel beautiful. But, the Gangster is a pimp and exploits women, which shows the degradation of women such as Beli. The Trujillo system in the Dominican Republic, under which the Cabaral’s are associated with, exploits women and the Gangster, just like Trujillo did exactly that. This path of life that Beli embarks on is the wrong choice because it is plagued with the fukú. She sees the Gangster as an escape out of her current life because he is extremely rich. The Gangster promises her a house in Miami with as many bedrooms as she wants. Beli is naïve and does not realize that the Gangster cannot help her escape her life that she is unhappy with. Instead all the Gangster can bring to Beli is bad luck. The Gangster ends up being married to Trujillo’s sister, who is extremely cruel and lives up to the name of Trujillo. The Gangster’s wife has Beli beaten until she almost dies. Beli is vulnerable because the Gangster has power over her; she truly believes that he is an escape from her Dominican world. All along La Inca sees otherwise and tells Beli that she is crazy. La Inca also implies that a man cannot save her, but Beli continues to make
Kumaraswami (2007) identifies that the females presented are stereotypical in their nature; this is to say that they either exist in the domestic atmosphere or that they have lost their purity due to being forced into the revolution. Although Camila and Pintada are complete opposites, the similarity lays in the fact that they both fit different parts of society at that time: “En combinación, forman una síntesis de dos extremos irreconciliables que se le presentan a la mujer mexicana y entre los cuales tiene que escoger” (Clark, 1980). In this sense, the mexican women were in two different situations, those who wished to remain traditionalistic and those who sought self-advancement through the likes of previously considered male characteristics. One can see the traditional character through Camila, Azuela has ensured that initially Camila would fit the traditional role of the female, caring, weak, and doting to the men’s needs. Thus Camila seems to be a flat stereotypical character that is expected to appear in novels of this era if women were to appear at all. Nevertheless, the character of Camila becomes more dynamic as Los de Abajo develops, thus she becomes more of an indication as to how women involved in the revolution did not remain ‘sana y buena’. On the contrary, the almost paradoxical characteristics of Pintada seem to confuse Azuela. Pintada is an emasculated character but only in the sense of
Because of her association with the young man, the police were planning to arrest her, but her father sold all of his worldly possessions, including his house in the city land his father had given him, and gave the money to the police in exchange for his daughter’s freedom. After fleeing from the city to the country, the girl writes a letter to her lover relating that “you must love him for this, manman says, you must. it is something you can never forget, the sacrifice he has made.” P.22. Sadly, her lover dies in route to America and she remains in Haiti bound to the sacrifice her family made to save her life. There is no freedom from oppression and suffering for the young man, no freedom from suffering and guilt for the young woman, and presumably, no freedom from poverty for her family in the years to
Prayers for the Stolen is about Ladydi Garcia Martínez. A 13 year old girl who is courageous, fierce, funny and smart. She was born in Mexico in the mountains of Guerrero where being a female is a curse. In Ladydi’s world, women must find ways to protect themselves against drug traffickers and sex traffickers, because all the men have left these women to fend for themselves. Ladydi’s world is full of drug wars as well, where dead bodies are found and be taken away by the common wildlife; and fear takes place where happiness used to be, embedding itself in a permanent spot. Ladydi and her friends go to school which student teachers volunteer their time away from the richer part of the city for a semester. Ladydi’s young world is full of fear.
Set in the time of the Mexican Revolutionary War, the De la Garza family consisted of Mama Elena and her three daughters. “The most significant, life-changing activities women carried out in the Revolution at the outset were related to their families” (Monk). The oldest daughter was Rosaura, followed by Gertrudis and then the youngest, Tita. Tita’s father had died shortly after Tita’s birth. They lived on a self-serving farm where all members were expected to help. Each female had chores that were to be completed without complaint. Even though the fictional story revolves around recipes, other gender based ideals are revealed. “These activities were no longer carried out inside four walls, causing family survival to become essential” (Monk).
Belize has some of the same social hindrances today as they did in the 1950’s, almost 63 years later, such as gender inequality. Beka, the protagonist, has a best friend name Toyce who is a seventeen year old girl attending school with Beka. Both of them attend a Catholic Private school, until Toyce became pregnant during her last year of school and is expelled. However, Emilio, the boy who impregnated Toyce, did not face any consequences. Toyce’s pregnancy, abandonment of Emilio, and expulsion from school led Toyce to her own demise after suffering mental issues. The chain of events which led to Toyce’s death is prevalent because it displays that gender differences in Belize, which also affected Beka. Toyce was left alone, pregnant and uneducated while Emilio continued his education to become a success in Belize. Toyce was Beka’s idol at the beginning of the book, but her death caused Beka to reevaluate her life and decisions. In fact after Toyce’s death, Beka won a writing contest, which gave her a feeling of accomplishment and relief. Beka realized that she could be more than a Belizean living in poverty and living her life thoug...