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Barrio Boy

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Submitted By loop1230
Words 1435
Pages 6
Alexandra Ortiz
English 120
Professor DiFranco
Essay #2
Sacramento
Both Ernesto Galarza’s “Barrio Boy” and Joan Didion’s “Notes From a Native Daughter” write about Sacramento’s past. Both authors talk about Sacramento during two different time periods. Joan Didion talks about the mid-century and Ernesto Galarza talks about the early 20th century. Although both author’s perspective of Sacramento differs from era to era, there are differences in certain characteristics described by both authors. Galarza’s essay focuses on an immigrant point of view arriving into Sacramento versus Didion’s experiences as a native decedent of Sacramento. Joan Didion’s Sacramento is a very different place compared to Ernesto Galarza’s , for him it’s an immigrant place where Mexican, Yugoslavs, Chinese and many other different cultures come together to make one home. For Joan Didion, Sacramento is a place that with the pas of time and the changes that has come with time, have forced memories to be lost and most importantly identities. Didion highlights the true nature of Californian lifestyle and how with its gradual disappearance more than the past is being lost, but a new generation is also losing an understanding of its true roots, its true history and as a result a loss of knowledge. The loss of knowledge is equivalent to the loss of identity because if one doesn’t know where they came from how one can truly know who they are. Didion talks about her own experiences as a child in Sacramento and adulthood. She compares how much Sacramento has changed since she left. For example, in her essay Didion observes the changes in Sacramento beginning with the introduction of industrialization; she mentions that prior to modernization, Sacramento was nothing but an isolated land mass and with the discovery of gold Sacramento abruptly developed into a town and later on a city. Didion

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