Final Blog Ever!

So the semester is finally over, and I've discovered that this term I've learned a lot of things, some of which were quite unexpected. For instance, the fact that people in Canada take the immigration experience for granted was a theme we widely explored, especially as of late. People don't really think about issues unless they are a direct influence on their lives, so although I am an immigrant myself, I sometimes forget the many hardships that accompany that type of change. It's easy to forget just how hard it really is to pick up your entire life and move to another country, when I've been living in Canada for so long and would actually consider myself to be more of a Canadian than anything. Listening to Carmen Rodriguez talk on Friday was quite inspiring: to read a book and get to interview the mind where it all came form is quite a privilege. Carmen really reminded me of my grandma actually, in the way she talked about her book and her grandchildren. I really wish I could be taking her class in the spring semester. It would be interesting to see how she approaches similar issues that we talked about. It was interesting to ask her about the whole fiction/biography issue, and to see her answer be pretty much what we had assumed the reason to be. I loved how down-to-earth she was: it is true what she said about biographies though. It is quite presumptuous of someone to write their own biography. Regarding the rest of this course, I wouldn't say that I discovered new things, but I've definitely learned to look at issues from a different perspective. Reading all these books from the perspective of other immigrants and having people of such diverse backgrounds come together and discuss our own opinions was really quite enlightening. Our discussions sometimes ended with such opposite outlooks, and I found myself overwhelmed with feelings of empathy. I’d definitely keep the Alvarez book and even read it again, however the thought of reading Marti or Ruiz the Burton again is not something I would do in the near future. Overall, I quite enjoyed this class, as it gave me the chance to read these books that one wouldn’t normally find in the curriculum of a regular literature class. I wish you all luck with the rest of the year and finals!

Carmen Rodrigez

This book started off really interesting in my eyes and slowly detiorated into a chore to read. It seems like Rodriguez is trying to be too poetic and fragmented, and the overall effect is not very pleasant to the reader. It felt like I was a part of an inside joke, unable to understand what was going on. I couldn’t tell who was talking when and about what. I guess that's because I should've looked into the background of the events that were talked about, but now it's too late and I have a bad impression of this book. The first chapter about the family coming to Vancouver was really good however; I was surprised to realize that the story was about Canada and not about the States like many of the books we have been reading. It was nice to hear the Burrard Bridge and Stanley Park mentioned. It pained me to read about the reaction of the grandma to the family moving away and forgetting their roots to a certain extent. The girls were ashamed to be Latin, to speak in Spanish, and to eat Chilean dishes. What the grandma doesn’t understand is that although it can be very painful to forget your roots, it’s worse to be in a country and to not fit in at all. It’s not even like the family chose to move away, they were forced to. This changes things dramatically because they don’t have the option to come back like the Garcia girls. When one is forced out of their home, they have to do anything in their power to make their new home feel comfortable. It’s sad that this multinational identity had to cause so many problems and painful moments, but that is just the life of an immigrant, especially that of an exiled one. I can relate to this because both my mom and dad’s siblings, including us, have moved away from South America. It must be devastating to our grandparents to come visit us only once a year if even that, and see that we have grown without them and no longer see our native tongue as our first. We no longer dream in Portuguese or say “ai” when we get hurt. We are interested in watching Friends and Gilmore Girls and not Novellas. We don’t ask them to bring us that obscure little chocolate we used to love: we are content with what we have here. However, they are very supportive of us looking for a better place to live, unlike the grandma in this story.

Final Garcia Girls

So I just finished the book, and I'm glad to finally find a book in its entirety that I will not be selling back. I love how the historical context of it was so accurate and the fact that we got to follow their impact on real people instead of just reading about it in a history book. I found it really interesting how the tale was told from the future to the past, and I wonder why that was deemed necesary by Alvarez? Why did she feel the need to tell her story this way when it wouldn've been just as effective to tell it chronologically? My belief is that this way, the reader can see exactly the roots that later influenced the girls to act the way they did and become who they did in society. Honestly, I'm going to need to read the book again from the start (or rather the end) to be able to fully understand it. The lines of who is who and what happens when are somewhat blurred (and I wonder is this was the desired effect). Much like the mother would dress her girls in the same colour always and call them all by the same nickname, I found their personality boundaries somewhat blurred as well. They all seem like distinct people when you are reading their own stories, but looking back I can't exactly remember them as different people. It seems like if they are the same sister, going through differnt but similar issues (sorry my computer just erased what I had writtenf rom now on, so i'm going to try to remember what I had said..gah).
Also, I wonder about the haitian cook. It seems weird to me that she would want to be in a coffin every night just to become acustomed to being in that environment when she dies. I hadn't perceived haitian people as very "voodoo" until now, so i find it very compelling to learn more about what exactly they believe in.
Alvarez definetly puts a lot of herself and her life in this book. (I'm doing my wikipedia on her). Right now if anybody were to ask me that cliche question of who I'd like to have lunch with, anybody dead or alive, I'd have to say Alvarez. I'd be curious to know just how much she actually embellished in the story for the sake of a commercial book, or how much is actually true (such as the haitian cook, the "proving you are a girl", and the art lesson story)
Something that was mentioned in class right before we were dismissed was what we though the parents could've possibly done to make 50% of their girls go crazy. I dont think it's the parents fault at all. It is true that we are much influenced by our lives at home, however, the parents only moved the girls for their own protection. I dont think it was a choice as much of a necessity: they probably woudn't have been alive had they stayed. The problems that led the girls to go crazy, consequentially, were thsoe of adjusting to a new life and being pulled like rag dolls from one culture to the other. I believe we all go through issues in our lives, and it's unfair to blame the parents for something that they only did with good intentions when any of us could go mad from what they faced, and we all face every day regardless of having their exact experiences. We all have the need to belong and problems that come with it, therefore I think examining the source of their madness is somewhat insensitive to the people we are to blame.
Looking forward to discussing this book for another week.

Alvarez #1

This book really hit me close to the heart. As an immigrant from a latin country, I can relate to the things being mentioned in the story. Its hard to describe exactly how I feel at home reading it, but I think that is what is so distinctively south american. The descriptions of the dad's birthday parties sound like my family's birthday parties. That feeling of being around all of your family members and enjoying their company is something I miss profoundly. My family of 4 people is the only contact I get, as I have family all around the world but we never actually see each other at the same time. 

My wikipedia project is Julia Alvarez, and so I'm really excited to read a book by an author with whom I'm familiar with. I can see the roots of the author in the story, and it is said to be so realistic that her own sisters and mother didn't speak with her for a long time after it was published as they felt it was offensive.

Also, Alvarez's father escaped the Dominican after being an active protester of the current government of the time. The father in this story resembles him in the way he just wants what is best for his family. The way he hands out money to his daughters because he believes his hard work is all to better the lives of his family members really illustrated how Alvarez's own father felt about his family and his country. 

I'm looking forward to seeing how this book flourishes and how "the garcia girls lost their accents" haha

The style of this book is not as coherent as I would've liked however. Although the chapters are all about the same woman (I believe), it is still a different story at every chapter. This reminds me somewhat of "Y no se trago la tierra" as the reader is forced to re-orient themselves at every twist and turn. 

I admire Alvarez's brutal honesty about her own family members: it takes a lot of guts to write this closely about a character knowing the people they are based on are going to eventually read what you have to say. It almost feels like I am reading a journal entry and entering her thoughts in a really private matter.

The story about the guavas shows that side of Alvarez that is almost victorian in nature (sorry haha talking about this in another class). She strives to be her best at everything she does and not to give up when there appears to be a barrier. 

Cisneros #2

The first impressions of this book are definetly not what I think about now in relations to this novel. By reading my first blog entry on Cisneros and reminiscing back to what I thought this book was going to be like, I never imagined how blunt certain issues would be adressed. We didnt talk about it much in class, but I cannot believe how the woman in the story gets such sick pleasure from ruining people's lives. I still can't get over this fact, and I'm going to attribute it to my psych major. It's hard to say if the omwna in the story is the same person throughout the entire novel, but if the girl who was raped is the same woman who was hidding little gummy bears in her lover's house to be found by his wife, I would be able to comprehend her character a lot more. Women, and especially chicanas, sometimes feel a loss of control in their lives that can be due to many aspects of the immigrant experience. This includes the language barriers, dignity losses, the fact that all aspects of their lives are brand new, oppression...and the list goes on. It is so hard for these women to make their lives in America when they themselves look down on ther own races. It is so hard to have pride in something that is so often bashed by society and looked down upon.
I know this is somewhat digressing, but I was watching "Bend it like Beckham" this weekend, and the same issues of double standards arose that I'm finding in this book. Why can men be upset about the situations they fnd themselves in (such as not having enough money to support their famalies, not being able to change their situation), but women cannot? Why do women have to turn to men to find the happiness they deserve in life. I am so proud of the woman who hollers as she passes over the creek in that tale about the wife escaping her husband. chicanas need to see that it is alright for a woman to be independent, and that she can make it out there in the real world wihtout a man.
Many times in these stories, the woman has to feel ashamed for being sexual but the man doesnt (why should the woman have to move away when she is pregnant but he man can stay wherever he pleases and continue on with his life sans-baby?)
It is just sad to me that these issues have to be written about in a book for us to be aware of what they are. They should not be a problem, period.
And along that note, north american women are no better than those in this book. We too wait anxiously to find the right man that will suddenly make our lives complete. We too rely on sitcoms to dictate what our relationships should resemble. I am not going to stant here (or rather write here) about how different these women are from us, because they are not. They may be faced with some hardships that we take for granted, but overall: they are just women. Women who live life just like us and should get our empathy from the heart.

Woman Hollering Creek

I have to say I absolutely love this book, and that I'd honestly pick it up and read it in my spare time. I'm glad to finally be reading anoher book in english, and the fact that it's so enjoyable is just a cherry on top of it all. Reading a book from a child's perspective seems to be a theme lately in class, and I'd agree that it is quite effective. Children are naive enough that their views on the word are yet to be tainted by societal norms. This child speaks so frankly about her life, and is so eloquent with spewing out her feelings on even mundane problems (like the red sweater story) that you forget about as you grow up. These stories are written in an almost run-on sentence style, and this helps solidfy the character behind the words: a child doesnt have the time to pause in her excitement or anxiousness to be more coherent. We can all imagine listening to a little girl who is somewhat of a chatterbox. This book reminds me somewhat of a dictionary I once received as a child in which every definition was something a child had said (for example grandma was defined as the fat lady who always gives me money). The child refers to those around her with very frank words: Uncle Fat-face, churches smelling like ears...

Although I did not exactly enjoy Marti's excessive descriptive style, Cisnero's is quite appealing. I am also enjoying the way the most mundane and quotidian affairs are described in the story. It's a completely different style from Rivera's, in which only very tumultuous events are described and the reader gets this heavy feeling in their chests. This book's suffering is of a different scale. I was surprised to hear the story of the man who raped her. It is never outright said, mentioned as an initiation of sorts. I couldnt believe what I was reading, and I wonder how old the girl is. By this time I believe a few years have passed since the first chapter, and so it's hard to think of this girl's future ruined because one person has no soul. However, it is nice to hear about her life so plainly, it reminds me of my childhood and brings good memories. It's not often that one feels this way, and mostly because it's not often one reads a book from this point of view. Its very fresh and raw and I'm very much looking forward to out class discussions to see what the rest of the class has been thinking about it as well.

My thoughts so far...

So I know that we are just supposed to do a blog entry on our thoughts so far in the course, but I've already started reading the next book, and I have to say I'm really excited to start talking about it after our exam next friday. So far, I've enjoyed this course: the spanish debates throw me off sometimes when I cant express my thoughts properly, but I'm really gaining insight on the experiences of the chicanos in America. The books we've read, although I havent enjoyed them all, do complement each other really well on the topics and issues we are discussing. The movie was just the cherry on top I'd have to say. Sometimes it's hard to sit down for a proper amount of time to give the attention a book deserves in order to fully grasp the story. This was different with the movie however, as we were forced to sit there and watch it all in 2 sittings, and that just made all the difference. Im not the kind of person that can read a book in so many fragments, but with the hectic life of university I'm finding I dont have the time to sit for 3 hours to read a book, and am instead reading it in chunks when im on the bus or have a break from classes. This doesnt impact me the way that its meant to, so I appreciate taking the time in class to discuss the more pertinent topics in the novels.