The play that intrigued me the most was “Si nos Escucharan” by Jocelyn Gonzalez. The play’s major themes are the gender inequities, legal status, and social corruption embedded in our political system. The play focused on three Central American female immigrants and their struggle and abuse they endured in their country, during their journey to United States, living in United States, and the way the world around them treats them due to their legal and gender status. The play touched upon immigrant women’s vulnerability of being invisible, exploited in labor work-force, and maltreatment in society.
The play reflects on real life situations that many female migrants experience. For instance, many migrant workers tragic experiences is directly linked to their legal status which contributes to an immigrant’s poor mental health and vulnerability due to the excessive discrimination and exploitation of colored
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Significantly, many of migrants in the play migrated to America due to their countries poverty, violence, and corruption. This demonstrates that many migrants have no choice, but are forced to leave their country in order to survive and provide to their families. This demonstrates the socioeconomic inequalities embedded in our society. Many of these issues are intertwine to United States intervention with these Latin countries. For instance, the reason for many of these disparities in Central American countries is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a structural economical and political tactic which profits corporations by exploiting the developed countries residents and resources which creates corruption and inequalities within the developed country. Therefore, by the play illustrating the protagonist background one can understand the reason for many of these immigrants reason for fleeing their
Many Guatemalan immigrants who arrived north to the United States, like Antonio, were fleeing from the danger and persecution of the Guatemalan civil war. Although they hoped to rebuild their lives and possibly better them. The reality was that they would continue to face hardships such as poverty, unequal rights, and discrimination. For example take this excerpt from one of our course readings, “The Reagan and Bush admissions, obsessed with stopping Communism in the region, refused to assist the thousands streaming across the Mexican border to escape that terror” (pg. 131). Even though a very large majority of Guatemalan immigrants that came to the U.S. were a result of the civil war that was caused by the by the United States, our government refused to assist. Antonio is forced out on the street because he does not make enough money as a dish washer to pay his rent. Although this occurs in the novel, it was a harsh reality for many Central American immigrants. With the refusal of assistance from the government, Guatemalan immigrants had to take jobs in coffee shops, dishwashers, field workers, and manual laborers. For example,“Good neighborhoods were defined as white, and whiteness was defined as good, stable, employed, and
Living Out by Lisa Loomer is a play that tells the story of the complicated relationship between a Salvadoran nanny and the lawyer she works for. Both women are smart, hard-working mothers who want better lives for their children. The play explores many similarities and differences between them. Through the main character Ana, we understand what it’s like to leave a child in another country and to come to come to the United States. We also get what the potential cost is like to sacrifice your own child in order to care for someone else's. Through the lawyer; Nancy, we understand the pressure on women today. How they try to do everything perfectly and sometimes having to put work before their family. The play also looks at the discrimination and misconceptions between Anglos (White American’s) and Latinos.
The immigration and gender politics issues are the central parts of the play in “Real Women Have Curves”. However, the film is mainly focus on the gender issue, and it takes out the whole part of immigration, which is the biggest change in the story. The movie mainly focuses on Aha while the play
This quote serves as an understatement because the story portrays a casual exchange between the brainwashed Secretary and seller about Mexican puppets. The satirical tone elucidates how people may acknowledge their own prejudices and comprehend how Mexicans feel. Through the Mexican-American character, the author makes it clearly evident of an attempt to end prejudice in itself. The author illuminates the ludicrous hypocrisy behind labeling; this play serves to help society see the injustice of their opinions and to meet their perception.
The “hired girls” had lived trying lives. They had grown up in the hardest times of their families. Because they worked to support the family, most had not received any ty...
... Americans during the post-war period. While the working class Younger family makes the move from the inner city to the suburbs, it is without the encouragement from any other working or middle class African American characters in the play. The experience of the Youngers characterizes the class conflict felt by many African Americans during the suburban migration.
The story “Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros describes the lives of Mexicans in a Chicago neighborhood. She depicts the life that women endure as Latino wives through her portrayal of the protagonist, Cleofilas. For Cisneros being a Mexican-American has given her a chance to see life from two different cultures. In addition, Cisneros has written the story from a woman’s perspective, illustrating the types of conflicts many women face as Latino wives. This unique paradigm allows the reader to examine the events and characters using a feminist critical perspective.
A Raisin In the Sun, The House On Mango Street, and A Yellow Raft In Blue Water all contain strong, defined images of women. These women control and are controlled. They are oppressed and liberated. Standing tall, they are confident and independent. Hunched low, they are vulnerable and insecure. They are grandmothers, aunts, mothers, wives, lovers, friends, sisters and children. Although they span a wide range of years and roles, a common thread is woven through all of their lives, a thread which confronts them day in and day out. This thread is the challenge they face as minority women in America to find liberation and freedom from lives loaded down with bondage. These women fight to live and in their living they display their strengths and their weaknesses. They demonstrate the opposition many women face being viewed as the inferior sex as well as discrimination against their ethnicity. In this struggle Hansberry, Dorris and Cisneros depict women attempting to find confidence and security in the society around them. Comparing and contrasting the novels A Raisin In the Sun, The House On Mango Street, and A Yellow Raft In Blue Water, three principal images of women emerge: their strength, bondage and liberation. These images combine to depict the struggle of many minority women, regardless of their ethnic background, and shapes the character they draw from society.
I think this play is a lot about what does race mean, and to what extent do we perform race either onstage or in life:
Throughout the plays, the reader can visualize how men dismiss women as trivial and treat them like property, even though the lifestyles they are living in are very much in contrast. The playwrights, each in their own way, are addressing the issues that have negatively impacted the identity of women in society.
Reyna Grande in her book “The Distance Between Us” recounts her life journey from living in poverty in Mexico to living in prosperity in America. One quote encompasses the motivation for the mass migration north of illegal immigrants. Grande’s mothers words “But no poverty here can compare to the poverty we left behind” (224). Grande describes the poverty that pushed her family north. It was the hunger in the pit of the stomachs of men and women. The scarcity of jobs that didn’t allow men to provide for their families. “Back then, I didn’t know that Guerrero was the Mexican state with the most people emigrating due to the scarcity of jobs. I hadn’t know that a year before he left, my father had already been leaving home to find construction work in Acapulco, Mexico City, even as far as Mazatlan, Sinaloa until eventually making his way farther north,” (59) wrote Grande. Hunger is a powerful motivator for migration. As Grande describes in her book parents leave their children in hopes of finding a better tomorrow. Providing their children with food, clothes and an education. As long as Latin America is poverty stricken people will migrate north, some will bring children. To escape the hardships of poverty, the lice, the worms swimming in the bellies of children. Poverty that is a result of US policy. In an article titled “The Political Economy of the “Illegal Immigrant,” by Steve Martinot, he writes
This agency creates a complex self-realization that readers find in both of the characters, however both shows different approach that differentiate their character from one another. As a result, both characters manifest a sense of victimization, but somehow in their hope for upward mobility, negate that. The power of this purpose is retrospective to all migrant workers because that is all they have---it’s rather success or failure.
Rizga shows her understanding of her audience through the use of appeals, reinforcement of thesis, and lead-in to the introduction. Rizga demonstrates strong audience awareness by telling the story of Maria, a Salvadorian girl newly arrived to the United States. Rizga writes about Maria’s struggles in her country as well as the struggles she was faced with upon arriving to the United States, which appeals to the audience’s emotions. Rhee, however, has a very weak appeal, “As a parent, I understand that problem.” Unlike Rhee, Rizga immediately begins her article with Maria being bullied in school for not knowing English.
Some say that this play is racial in that the family is black, and what the family is going through could only happen to people of that race. One prominent racial is...
To my mind we have to deal with it; the ideal situation would be that this system- the system we invented at first only for a bit of help, but which has now come to replace our actual work- wouldn't be able to "work" without us, without human "touch". It should probably be a satisfactory combination of duty and pleasure: the duty you have towards the place where you work, and the pleasure consisting in having your work done easier with the help of your "friend" technology- the computer.