Mrs. Augustine English 19 March 2024 Navigating Grief In a world full of loss, mastering the art of coping isn't just survival, it's the key to not losing yourself in a sea of grief. Through Julia's journey, you see how she struggles to manage her mental health and cope with her grief, but eventually, she finds herself. In the book I'm Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Sanchez argues that the inability to cope with loss can lead to unstable mental health, particularly while trying to grow up and move on. To begin with, Julia goes through the difficulties of growing up while grieving, especially with pressure from her family to live up to her sister's high standards. After Julia’s sister’s death, however, her mom expects her to be as perfect as Olga, not recognizing that Julia is her own person. …show more content…
She has compared me to my sister every single day of my life” (14). Even if she's trying to help, her mom's words make Julia feel like she doesn't measure up. With every comparison, Julia’s confidence shrinks, making it even harder for her to cope with her loss. Despite the constant pressure to be like Olga, Julia stays determined to prove she's more than just her sister's shadow. Her sister's death affects Julia's mental health, this is because Julia’s grief makes her unable to focus in school, having panic attacks and she tries to isolate herself from others. Julia starts to feel hopeless, Julia exclaims, “No matter how hard I try, no matter how fast I run, I just can't reach it. Even when I think I grasp it, I open my hand and it is empty” (183). Julia explains how upset, frustrated, and mentally exhausted she is. She simply feels like her efforts aren't enough. Julia’s grief has taken a toll on her self-esteem and emotional
Undoubtedly, William’s suicide had a devastating effect upon Julia. After William’s death, she decided to move out of the Lavender Suite and into the William Lemp Suite across the hall. Also in late 1905, Julia was diagnosed with cancer. Her final weeks were spent in extreme pain. After becoming bedridden, she requested to be moved back into Lavender Suite. I think she wanted to spend her final days in the same room where her beloved husband took his own life. Julia lost her battle with cancer on April 6,
Irene’s mom was becoming sick very fast, and could not eat the food that Irene saved her. One cold and snowy day, Irene was looking for the scarf that they still owned so she could go do her work, but it was wrapped around her mother because she was cold. Olga then told Irene that their mom was dead. Their mother’s body lay alongside hundreds of other bodies. Later, her sister became very sick and weak, and could not walk.
“I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter”, by Erika L. Sanchez is a novel of shattering stereotype, Mexican teenager coming-of-age. Introducing Julia Reyes, fifteen-year-old teenager who desperately wants to go to college She’s a very outspoken sarcastic feminist with big dreams and a real hunger for art. The daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants Ama and Apa, living in a apartment infested with roaches. She’s filled with anger almost all the time and perpetually bitter because she is poor. Suffering from the loss of her prude older sister, Olga, who died by being run over by a semi-truck. Julia battless with the death of her sister Olga, her parents are having a challenging time with Julia not wanting to be a perfect Mexican daughter. However, for Julia her life needs more than being your traditional Mexican daughter have a good office job, marrying a Mexican, raising children, and preparing tortilla until the day she dies. In which, Ama struggles with daily, on why Julia just can’t be perfect like her dead sister Olga. Even though families are based on culture and
It sometimes is quite difficult to find one’s voice when no one is truly listening or understands. Yolanda, or "Yo", a Dominican immigrant, has grown up to be a writer and in the process infuriates her entire family by publishing the intimate details of their lives as fiction. “¡Yo!” is an exploration of a woman's soul, a meditation on the writing life, as well as a lyrical account of Latino immigrants’ search for identity and a place in the United States. Julia Alvarez divides her novel ¡Yo! into chapters to distinguish the perspectives of each member of the Garcia family. Through the stylistic, subtle homage to the Spanish language as well as speaking on the horrors that occurred during the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, Julia Alvarez showcases storytelling in the first chapter of her novel titled “From ¡Yo! The Mother” to show how Yo and her entire family used it to cope with their struggles as immigrants in America. By telling stories, Yo’s mother Laura, battles between her Dominican and American identities to ultimately redefine not only who she is, but also who she and her family will be.
People are discriminated against because of their race and social position every day. This has been going on for hundreds of years. In Mexican White Boy, Danny and Uno were discriminated against by people around them for being different, but along the way of discovering themselves, they form an unbreakable friendship.
The increase and changing demography in the United State today, with the disparities in the health status of people from different cultural backgrounds has been a challenge for health care professionals to consider cultural diversity as a priority. It is impossible for nurses and other healthcare professionals to learn and understand theses diversity in culture, but using other approaches like an interpreter is very helpful for both nurses and patients. In this paper of a culturally appropriate care planning, I will be discussing on the Hispanic American culture because, I had come across a lot of them in my career as a nurse. The Hispanic are very diverse in terms of communication and communities and include countries like Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, South and Central America, and some of them speak and write English very well, some speaks but can’t write while some can’t communicate in English at all but Spanish.
They face many issues such as economic instability, depression, loneliness, fear of being alone and feeling betrayed. Children feel depressed in cases like this because even at a young age they know that things are not okay. They also suffer from fear and being betrayed, they suffer fear because they 're scared of what is going to happen to their family since they 're so used to having their family together. Many times children who face this situations feel like they’ve been betrayed because they don’t know why their mother or father have gone away and not came back. The psychologist mentions that it’s very normal for children to feel this way and conduct a different behaviour than usual because just like everyone else they don’t seem to understand
After the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) roughly 77,000 Mexican people became citizens of the United States. Since then many of these citizens and later immigrants have been treated as unequal persons or worse. In the early part of the 20th century Mexican Americans faced injustices such as segregation, inequalities in employment, housing, education, and even frequent hangings. Further, they were not allowed to vote due to the fact that many of them had difficulty understanding English, and were not permitted to learn the language. Mexicans were not allowed to vote, and when they finally were they had to pay money for the right to vote. A large number of the Mexican people did not have the money to pay for this right, so their white bosses paid the fee and told them to vote for a candidate that favored the boss.
During the 1900’s through 1950’s the United States experienced an influx of immigrants coming in from Mexico seeking employment opportunities, as many of them wanted to avoid the Mexican Revolution occurring from 1910 to 1920. Methods for arriving in the United States varied for each individual’s preference of the destination, but the means of transportation had been constant throughout. These methods of transportation consisted of contractors seeking unskilled workers willing to partake in hard labor in steel, railroad, or agriculture companies. Contractors traveled to towns close to Mexico’s boarder such as Laredo or El Paso seeking Mexicans citizens for labors. In some instances, immigrants traveled on their own will based on the advice
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Gazing upon my sister, it was as though she had been replaced by her complete opposite. Where once her face had been covered with smiles all of the time, her face was now contorted with grief, and it looked like she would never smile again. Her look could only be described as a small child who has lost a toy in the sand box.
We don’t realize how hard it is for immigrant parents to get their children education, and we judge and hate on something we have never been through. I guess it’s true you never know someone’s pain unless you go through it. Not everyone has the same privileges as others, some have to work twice as hard to try to give their children an opportunity towards an education on the contrary some American families have it simpler. I not blaming people who have families who were born here or say it’s wrong, but many people tend to affront children of immigrant parents and feel like they have the equitableness to say they aren’t suitable to receive public education.
Many reviews have been written on Julia Alvarez since she is a Dominican Diaspora, a Jew who lived outside of Israel, who wrote in a Latina perspective in the country of Uni...
What is culture? Many people ask themselves this question every day. The more you think about it the more confusing it is. Sometimes you start leaning to a culture and then people tell you you’re wrong or they make you feel like a different person because of your culture. I go through this almost every day. Because of the way I was raised I love Mexican rodeo but I was born and raised in Joliet. This can be very difficult trying to understand culture. I live in this huge mix of culture. Culture is personal. People can have many cultures especially in America and because of globalization. Cultural identity is not one or the other, it is not Mexican or American. Cultural identity is an individual relevant thing.
Growing up in a Mexican household where education isn’t a priority or important has been one of my major obstacles that I’ve had to overcome. Although my family’s culture believes that education isn’t necessary their experiences and lifestyles have influence and motivate my choices for my future. I come from a home where I have no role model or someone influential. I have no one to ask for advice for college or anything involve in school. In most homes, older siblings help their younger siblings with their homework or projects but in my house no one was able to provide me with any help. I grew up to be independent and to do anything school related on my own. My parents are both immigrants who didn’t get to finish elementary