Shelley's awesome English blog

Sometimes less is more and in this case I think that just saying “immigrant values are family values” says everything that needs tobe said. When I see this picture and read what it says, to me lets me know thatthey want the same education and upbringing of their child as an American. People who come to this country just want to make sure that their family can make it
in life without having to struggle as much as they did back home, and insure that their children get as much of life as possible. Family is one of the main reason someone would risk their life to cross the border or take a boat across the ocean, just like an American person would jump in a fire to save their loved ones, it’s just different because Americans do not have to work as hard as an illegal immigrant or any immigrant. We as Americans have the advantage of knowing the language but a lot of immigrants don’t and when they come to the United States they have to start from scratch but it’s okay because they are doing it for their families. This is why I think this picture is very meaningful; you get so much from 5 little words.

I liked this story very much because it showed us
one side of ideas of an immigrant of what the American dream is to them, and
how they can achieve it. Here we have a mother that wants to invent household
items to one day become rich. She tells her daughter “cuquita, when I make a
million, I’ll buy you your very own typewriter” (1741), the idea of being able
to provide to her family their wants and needs is something that every
immigrant wants when they come to America. Something else that stuck out to me
when reading this was when the mother screamed from the other room and the
father rushed to go see what was going on, and the way the narrator describes
the father with “terror in his voice, the same fear she’d heard in the
Dominican Republic before they left. They had been watched there; he was even
followed […] Now in America, he was safe, a success even […]” (1742). In class
we spoke about reasons why people came to the United States and from this quote
we can see that another one of the reasons aside from reaching the American Dream
that families decided to leave their country was to move away from something
dangerous. Some people leave for religious reasons, and some people have to
leave for safety issues. A lot of the times we tend to assume that they just
want to get rich and be able to do what they can to give their families
everything they need without thinking about other motives to why they might
have migrated.

One of the reasons I choose to talk about this story is because I’ve liked Esmeralda Santiago’s work since I was in High School. In the story The American Invasion of Macun I really like when she starts by saying “What doesn’t kill you, makes you fat” (1701) and I think that is something every Hispanic person has heard once in their lifetime, and the times ive heard it is when talking about a food that someone doesn’t like or thinks looks funny, or even when trying out a certain food for a first time you hear someone say that before they try it.  This story really reminded me of my mother when she was growing up because there was a time when she had a tapeworm and she was telling me how they used home remedies to take them out. She would then proceed to explain to me why I should and shouldn’t do certain things so I wouldn’t get them.  Another part of the story that bought me back to my own childhood was when the mother said “if one of you has worms, you all have worms” (1705), I don’t know if it was just in my family but if anybody had anything then we all did, or even if someone got punished we did too because the person giving the punishment (if it were my mother or other family member) said that we would all learn the same lesson and know not to do what that person did. I also very much so hated getting purgantes/enemas because it was just weird and nasty especially the ones that went in the booty, and given if I went to the Dominican Republic on vacation I knew that when I went back home a purgante was waiting for me.

This video was awesome! Here you have a teacher showing those ladies how it is they can communicate with their nanny’s when it comes to doing the household chores in a polite matter and they ask to learn these outrages phrases. Sometimes I wonder whether they realize that they are talking to a person and not an animal, like one of the ladies saying she wants to learn how to tell her maid to use the outside pot potty. Reminds me of a book I recently read The Help one of the white ladies wanted to implement a regulation where black people had their own bathroom because supposedly they carry different diseases that a white immune system couldn’t handle. And like the video where the teacher teaches them to say bad things about themselves to the nannies in Spanish, the lady in the book’s friend wrote a newsletter saying to go on by her house and leave their toilets on her lawn.

I really think that this picture is very witty and on point when it comes to the immigration situation in the United States. The picture to me shows us what it is that they imagine when they think about the great things they would get here that they don’t back home. Of course anyone that is coming to the United States wants to be able to give their children a better education and have health care because in some countries it is very expensive to have these things and the families don’t make enough money to have those “luxuries”. We really take all of this for granted when there are a lot of children and people in general who would love to get an education, or be able to go to the doctor because they have a cold  and get medicine but are less fortunate.

I thought this Video really showed us what it is to be an immigrant in America. In the beginning of the videos the women were talking about how the people that go and cross the border don’t make it and a lot of people die because of the heat. I know someone who crossed the border coming from Guatemala and the story was so sad, she went through so much and when her husband who was also here illegally went to go meet her in North Carolina he said she was walking bones. The day I met her I realized that I should feel very grateful of what I have in life. Then we meet some of the people that were able to come over to American and get a job to have a better life here for themselves and their family and also be able to send money back home to support their other family. They talk about how hard it is to get a job and how some were lucky to get a job because of a family member or family friend. It’s sad that some like Juan Manuel has so much on his plate to take care of his family over in his country and also provide for himself.

In class we talked about why assimilation to the U.S. mainstream could be a good or bad thing and some people in class said it was a good thing because it’s positive to learn new country’s language and culture. Some people argued that it was a bad thing because it can cause divisions within families like parents and children because parents might speak one language and kids speak another. I personally think that it is a good thing; people can learn a lot about the different culture and also the different languages. On the other hand I think it’s a bad thing because some people loose themselves, like my brother he was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and now he doesn’t even acknowledge that part of his past and has now even forgot how to write Spanish and he barely writes it. On the other hand I was born here and I embrace my Dominican side more than he does, I write and speak Spanish better than him. One of the stories that I could relate to is Hunger of Memory when he says “with firm Spanish sounds, he conveyed confidence and authority English would never allow him” (1583). Sometimes my mother calls me from work to tell me something and she believes that she shouldn’t speak Spanish in front of her patients because they’ll judge her and think less of her. She struggles to have a conversation with me in English so much that she gives up and waits until after work to call me and tell me in Spanish where she feels more comfortable and confident when speaking it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vq8IkMnY5A

I thought this video was hilarious. This is a remake of one of a very popular song that came out last year and if you listen to the words its very funny. The guy in this song is saying that he fell in love and he wanted to tell the girl but he couldn’t because he didnt know how to speak English. It’s pretty much turning an unfortunate situtation of a latinos life, not being able to communicate with people because they cant speak English and giving it a postive spin and instead of dwelling on it and being mad at ones self, it’s making fun of it.