Sandra Cisnersos's 'Mericans' By Sandra Cisneros

808 Words2 Pages

Sandra Cisneros’s "Mericans" Introduction This paper discusses the story ‘Mericans’ by Sandra Cisneros. The very name of the story ‘Mericans’ is a combination of two words i.e., Mexicans and Americans. The essay discusses the place of the text, the relation of the young people with the fact of being bilingual or having cultural differences. A character analysis has been developed of the narrator and focus has especially been placed on the reasons provided for cultural complexities mentioned in ‘Maricans’. This is another work of brevity and humor by Cisneros that are accessible even to those unfamiliar with the Mexican-American culture. This is another one of those man-bashing stories of Cisneros. The feminism of women of color, however, is complicated by ethnic identification. Cisneros is an ethnic author who offers only "positive" images of minorities talking about sexism in minority communities. In this story, Cisneros presents a work a conception of immigrant culture that is based on the model of European immigration to the United States. The Mexican-American War (1846-48), now the southwestern United States (including Texas and California) was part of Mexico. This is a Mexican family also that after the war, many erstwhile Mexicans automatically became U.S. citizens when it annexed the land where Mexicans had lived since the sixteenth century. One important theme in Cisneros's work is the heterogeneity of the Mexican-American community. Cisneros is, typically, more interested in detailing the dynamics of her own community rather than representing conflicts between Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans. Conflicts between Anglo and Latino cultures are, of course, present in Cisneros's writing, but they often take the form of ... ... middle of paper ... ...ns appear in them beyond the boundaries of this specific locale. Cultural tensions are not exactly extreme so as to cross the boundaries of this specific locale but at the same time there are the changes in the people and especially the young ones that have the tendency to bring up cultural conflicts of these young ones not with their counterparts in the new culture. But there is a chance of getting in conflict with the older ones of the original culture. For example, in this story there is more likeliness of Kreeks and Juniors getting in conflict with the grandmother and not much with their school or neighborhood friends. The gold crucifix is portrayed as bent crooked as a mesquite tree when someone once threw a bomb. The very next sentence after explaining that the crucifix is a little miracle and inside the mass is explained that the family is outside in the sun.

Open Document