In A Mexico Fellaheen from Lonesome Traveler, Jack Kerouac describes crossing the border between America and Mexico: "It's a great feeling of entering the Pure Land, especially because it's so close to dry faced Arizona and Texas and all over the Southwest B but you can find it, this feeling, this fellaheen feeling about life, that timeless gayety of people not involved in great cultural and civilization issues" (22). Mexico is at once "close to" America and yet distinct from it, a "Pure Land" removed from the fallout of Spengler's crumbling Western civilization. By acknowledging its primitive innocence, Kerouac calls attention to the difference between the ideal of freedom and pastoral harmony represented by Mexico and the reality of contemporary America. But more significantly, Kerouac describes later in the article the inherent contradictions of Mexico: in his experience with easily-accessible drugs, corrupt police, and fumbling novice bull-fighting, he also finds a profoundly religious people, and he is able to accept them without judgement as a complex mix of good and bad. As he says in that article, "I saw how everybody dies and nobody's going to care, I felt how awful it is to live just so you can die like a bull trapped in a screaming human ring" (33), but he ends with the understanding that "the world is permeated with roses of happiness all the time, but none of us know it. The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream" (36).
This vision of Mexico as a "Pure Land" with innate contradictions and complexity also appears in Kerouac's On the Road. In the final sections, Sal and Dean travel to Mexico City, but while Dean goes for kicks and to obtain a quick divorce, Sal goes for a different reas...
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...na Baym. New York: Norton, 1998. 1072-1101 & 1126-43.
Hunt, Tim. Kerouac's Crooked Road: Development of a Fiction. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1981.
Kerouac, Jack. "Mexico Fellaheen" from Lonesome Traveler. 1960. New York: Grove, 1988.
---. On the Road. 1957. New York: Penguin, 1991.
---. Visions of Cody. 1960. New York: Penguin, 1993.
Lardas, John. The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 2001.
Niebuhr, Rienhold. The Irony of American History. New York: Scribner's, 1952.
Schaub, Thomas Hill. American Fiction in the Cold War. Madison: U of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Tytell, John. "The Beat Generation and the Continuing American Revolution." in Ed. Holly George-Warren. The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture. New York: Hyperion, 1999. 55-67.
In Richard Rodriguez’s “Proofs,” Mexican immigrant’s destination is described, as well as their perceptions and expectations of America. Rodriguez describes the passage to the United States as difficult, yet worthy. He states: “The city will win. The city will give the children all the village could not- VCR’s, hairstyles, drum beat. The city sings mean songs, dirty songs. But the city will sing the children a great Protestant hymn.You can be anything you want to be.” He also states: “Mexico is poor. But mama says there
Monroy, Douglas. Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California . 1990.
The author of Mexican Lives, Judith Adler Hellman, grapples with the United States’ economic relationship with their neighbors to the south, Mexico. It also considers, through many interviews, the affairs of one nation. It is a work held to high esteem by many critics, who view this work as an essential part in truly understanding and capturing Mexico’s history. In Mexican Lives, Hellman presents us with a cast from all walks of life. This enables a reader to get more than one perspective, which tends to be bias. It also gives a more inclusive view of the nation of Mexico as a whole. Dealing with rebel activity, free trade, assassinations and their transition into the modern age, it justly captures a Mexico in its true light.
Martinez, Oscar. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1994), 232.
In conclusion, for many, Mexico is simply a country on a map. Even becoming a place that they wish to keep from and forget. For others like me, however; it was a place that hasn’t only reconnected me with my culture, but a home where I had the good fortune of reuniting me with my loved ones. Also, having had helped me come to terms with myself, my trip allowed me to find myself and recover what I had left
...brief portion of the feelings that accompanied the loss of land for California, New Mexico and Texas. As shown some were passive while others were aggressive. All felt and dealt with similar yet different experiences once America took over half of Mexico’s territory in 1848, after twenty-one months of war between the two nations (Padilla, 14). Whether one was accommodating or resistant to Americans in Mexico’s prior lands, the Mexicanos and Tejanos all felt uprooted, scared and unsure of what the future would hold for them. But one commonality that Juan Bautista Vigil y Alarid, Cleofas M. Jaramillo, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Eulalia Perez de Guillen Marine and Juan Nepumuceno Sequin all shared was that they told their stories and because of that the world will forever have the accounts of these people and their heritages told through their own histories.
...wler-Salamini and Mary Kay Vaughan, eds Creating Spaces, Shaping Transitions: Women of the Mexican Countryside, 1850-1990 Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994.
The 2006 documentary about Who Killed the Electric Car shows the determination of several California citizens whose willpower was to keep the electric car alive and running. The first existence of the electric car under General Motors (GM) dates back to 1996 when they launched the EV1 electric vehicle. And although several consumers took to this new form of transportation, a car that was powered by an electric motor in place of the basic gasoline engine, GM decided to take back its newest technology and removed all existing EV1’s from off of the streets. With several upset consumers who were concerned as to both what GM and the government were up to and how they could get their cars back. Overall, the fact behind why the electric car became such a superior commodity and then vanished was the question being asked. The electric vehicle was destroyed during 2004 and 2005 because a car of this statue was far ahead of its time and greater parts of consumers were not about “going green.” Today the electric car has begun to revive itself because of the existence of global warming, and the efficiency of the electric car is rising. In other words, the electric car has been brought back to life, and many automobile manufacturers are gaining interest.
In those days, from El Paso to Brownsville, all along the highways you would see restaurants dotted with signs: “No Mexicans Allowed” and we couldn’t go into restaurants, swimming pools and theaters; we had to go to places whereas [since] they were in “little Mexico,” little towns separate and apart from the cities; they were the Mexican sections of the cities. We couldn’t go to a barber shop, the movies; we couldn’t do many things. (Orozco 30)
...t of the electric car for the economic and practical benefits that would reinvigorate the country and make life easier for everyone. Upon revisiting the original question to this essay, the electric car is a worthy solution to our energy crisis and proves to be an economically responsible car. Its long-term cost savings outweighs easily improved flaws. However, in order to better understand the work done by scientists, research must be done specifically on the predecessors to the electric car and determine how those have stood the test of time. This will be done in order to help predict how the electric car will survive in the world. The future may always have a hint of uncertainty, but if scientists, governments, and drivers implement the new car with care, the goal of a smooth transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources can finally be achieved.
“What we need to do is really improve energy efficiency standards, develop in full scale renewable and alternative energy and use the one resource we have in abundance, our creativity.” (Lois Capps) There are many ways we can utilize our abundance of creativity. Some have yet to be discovered, but some are being sought out today. One of these is the rise of the electric car. Despite a rough start competing with petroleum cars, electric cars will see a spark in popularity in the automotive market within the next few years with new models being developed and more charge stations being installed world wide. With more efficient ways of harvesting energy, the electric car will see more practical use and make its way into the lives of the average
Imagine that you’re driving on an open highway in the middle of summer. All you see in front of you is asphalt for miles and miles. The windows are down and your favorite song comes on the radio. You’re behind the wheel of a Tesla Model S, the newest electric car that can go from zero to sixty miles per hour in 2.4 seconds. This will soon be the future of all motor vehicles. Electric cars are beginning to have colossal impacts on our society because of their energy efficiency, performance benefits, and the fact that they are less harmful to the environment. In the near future, electric cars will dominate the road and eventually the planet’s overall need for oil will decrease immensely.
Weissman, Dick. (2010). Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution: Music and Social Change in America. Blackbeat Books: New York
...rther then the end of 2010, the introduction of the electric car is not far to come. With proper government regulations and consumer knowledge, adoptability of the electric car is possible. However, one can drastically differ in opinion as to why the required elements to support such a vehicle were not readily planned to facilitate such a change. The inadequacies draw wavering concerns for both consumers and business looking for the return of value and profit. The larger picture needs to be remembered in which oil is not a renewable resource and results in pollution and environmental hazard. Consumers and business must work together to overcome the roadblocks down the road and support each other in the introduction of and future of the electric car. Adjustments will have to be made on both sides to ensure success and minimize the society and economy disruptions.
Shortly after the Kohlsaat race, Thomas Edison said he believed gasoline, not electricity, would provide the dominant power source for the automobile of the future. "As it looks at the present," he s...