...Espanol. Student: Gonzalo Gomez. Professor: Dorothy, Valentine. Course Title: English Composition April 17, 2013 “ Se Habla Espanol” is one of the best essays I have read in my life time because I can relate a lot to it. This essay was written by Tanya Maria Barrientos. This essay will help you see the struggles she had to over come while growing up in The United States and not speaking Spanish her native Language. Mrs Barrientos was born in Guatemala and was raised in El Paso TX. When she was 3 years old her family brought her to The United States. Her parents decided that they were only going to speak English in her household. Her parents had decided that the only way her and her brother could fit-in in the Anglo society was by only speaking English regardless of their Hispanic appearance. She wrote about a time when her parents took her one week late to school because they were on vacation. “At the school's office the registrar frowned when they arrived.” She told them “ you people. Your children are always behind, and you have the nerve to bring them late?” I personally been through that similar situation during my school years while growing up. I love her mothers response when she says “ My children will be at the top of their classes in two weeks.” I bet that took the registrar off track. Since she was young she thought that speaking Spanish meant various things. One of the things was that Spanish meant being poor. Another thing was that it meant waiting tables...
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...the essay "It’s Hard Enough Being Me," Anna Lisa Raya relates her experiences as a multicultural American at Columbia University in New York and the confusion she felt about her identity. She grew up in L.A. and mostly identified with her Mexican background, but occasionally with her Puerto Rican background as well. Upon arriving to New York however, she discovered that to everyone else, she was considered "Latina." She points out that a typical "Latina" must salsa dance, know Mexican history, and most importantly, speak Spanish. Raya argues that she doesn’t know any of these things, so how could this label apply to her? She’s caught between being a "sell-out" to her heritage, and at the same time a "spic" to Americans. She adds that trying to cope with college life and the confusion of searching for an identity is a burden. Anna Raya closes her essay by presenting a piece of advice she was given on how to deal with her identity. She was told that she should try to satisfy herself and not worry about other people’s opinions. Anna Lisa Raya’s essay is an informative account of life for a multicultural American as well as an important insight into how people of multicultural backgrounds handle the labels that are placed upon them, and the confusion it leads to in the attempt to find an identity. Searching for an identity in a society that seeks to place a label on each individual is a difficult task, especially for people of multicultural ancestry. Raya’s essay is an...
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...Negotiations Grantham University Abstract America is and will always be the greatest place on this earth to live and raise a family. One of the so called rights’ of passage to anyone living in modern times is to keep up with the current trends that may be going on. One of the main trends in America today is way to get back and forth from one place to another. No matter how people choose to travel. Owning their own car is one of the main trends we see no matter where we go. Although the reasons for getting a car may vary from person to person. No matter what their reasons may be they still have to show up at a local dealer and negotiate in some form or fashion. The purpose of this essay is to give my opinion on a negotiation strategy utilized by a character named Michelle. In this brief essay I will talk about the behavior I assume would be coming from a local car salesman. Finally I will summarize by giving the characteristics of the opening offer, reservation price, tactics, tradeoffs and discussions of a Plan B if the original plan becomes untenable. Distributive Bargaining With so many people getting jobs today and needing a way to get back and forth to get to work a way to pick their family and friends up or to just get from here to there. At some point in time they all have to go to a local care salesman and start the negotiation process to get the car they either wanted or the car they needed. Once they got to the salesman no matter what the outcome of the sale...
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...having prepackaged ideas about something can create a symbolic complex in an individual’s mind, causing them to lose the true essence behind it. Percy states that understanding can be reached through the true experience. People can only have a true experience if they can get rid of all the social biases and prejudices. Percy believes this to be true when he states, "the present is surrendered to the past and the future." (299) Thus, if one "surrenders" his experience, he loses what Percy labels as "it." In order to explain these examples, Percy...
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...Composition 1, Section 018 Unit Essay 1, First Draft Professor Petillo Dangerous Skinny Trend Both journalist, Michele Ingrassia in her article, “The Body of The Beholder” and Guy Trebay in his article “The Vanishing Point” explore issues of body image. Ingrassia for female, Trebay for male, but they both have similar points of view. Somehow they both tell about how the skinny fashion trend affects the people, especially the young girls and the people who are trying to be model. They are usually obsessed about being skinny and they believe that this is the way supposed to be for beauty. Obsession about their body make them either unhappy or sickly skinny. Ingrassia in her essay explore the reports that how African-American girls and white girls see their body. “The latest findings come in a study to be published in the journal Human Organization this spring by a team of black and white researchers at the University of Arizona. While 90 percent of the white junior-high and high-school girls studied voiced dissatisfaction Skinny trend is all over the media, in fashion magazines, in ads, and TV. Media has a big influence over people, especially young people. Most of the white girls grow up with Barbie dolls. Their beauty views start to get form at very early childhood. After that all the other things support their thoughts about beauty. Models are perfect beauty images for most of the people. Almost everyone wants...
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...The US has influenced the history of Mexico more than any other country in the world. There is no other Latin American country that lost so much in one fell swoop against a power hungry neighbor from the north. In one single act the US took all the land making up the areas we call home. California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada were taken from Mexico, in one of the largest land seizures of the century. This act was one of the results of the Mexican-American war of 1846, and will remain to be a topic of hostility between Mexican American relations till the end of time. The war is a historical event that has a shadow of suspicion cast over it. It seems to be misunderstood by all sides and it seems like the more that one looks into and researches...
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...university. Being a Hispanic, I have parents that came to the United States at a young age, in order to seek a better life. They were not able to finish school and were constantly telling my brothers and I the importance of getting a proper education, so that we didn’t have to struggle the way they did. This is a mindset I always grew up with, wanting to pursue my degree, to honor my parents, for everything they sacrificed for our family. When I finished the ninth grade, my life went through a radical change. I distinctly remember the day our parents sat my brothers and I down in the living room to give us the news that we were going to be moving to Mexico. Not only where we going to be moving to...
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...these structures were chosen. Since the commercial success of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros in the year 2000, there has been an indubitable resurgence in the amount of interest in, and amount of films being produced within Mexico. This picture, as well as Y Tu Mamá También (2001) by Alfonso Cuarón both received worldwide acclaim and have set a high benchmark for the other Mexican releases since the millennium to live up to. This essay will explore the prominence of narrative structure in the aforementioned Amores Perros (2001), as well as Amat Escalante’s Los Bastardos (2008) and Guillermo Del Toro’s El Espinazo del Diablo (2001). The constituents of a film’s narrative structure come under two different entities: the content of the film’s story, and the way in which the story is presented to the spectator. Vis-à-vis the content of the films story, the essay will mention how, on a thematic level, these films each rely heavily on the use of violence to delineate its message and intentions. James Kendrick states that the use of violence in a film is employed as a structuring device and it is evident that each of these films uses violence for differing intentions, of which the essay will later make discernible. Subsequently, the essay will contrast the order in which the stories are presented to the viewer, chiefly, regarding how Amores Perros uses a non-linear structure while Los Bastardos and El Espinazo del Diablo use a linear structure. Finally, the ending of the...
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...The Sound of Emo There are many stereotypes in society for every culture or group of people. These stereotypes are often based on musical influences, personalities, activities, and fashion. I am going to focus this essay on the group of people who are known as Emo. Both positive and negative attributes come from stereotyping an Emo follower, but most of society focuses on the negative. This essay will focus on all aspects in hopes of turning some of these negative stereotypes into more positive ones. The word Emo is often used to describe anyone who is perceived as being too emotional, often too sad or too dark. The term Emo is short for “Emotional Hardcore” which describes the genre of music an Emo follower would listen to. According to author Brian Bailey (2005), “[Emo music] is characterized by feelings of vulnerability, and...confessions about adolescence. Emo music draws from various genres of music including rock, punk, indie, pop, and heavy metal...The behaviors, attitudes, and values expressed through Emo music involve...despair, nostalgia, heartbreak, hope, and self-loathing.” These emotional characteristics and topics described in this genre's music often associate with the life experiences and characteristics of its listeners. Emo music is characterized by heavy, distorted, or acoustic guitar with male vocals ranging from soft whispering to screaming. Lyrics are expressive and melancholy. Mainstream Emo bands include Dashboard Confessional, My Chemical...
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...Comparing and Contrasting: Franklin and Anzaldua Expression: conveying of opinions publicly without interference by the government: “freedom of expression. (1)” Many artists express themselves through various ways; for various reasons. Frederick Douglass in his essay “How to Read” and Gloria Anzaldua’s essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” both express themselves through publicly released literature, and these two essays have successfully achieved to have common similarities and unique differences. For example, both authors have the same interpretation for literacy, and literacy to them means to overcome negativity and prevail from hate from another individual that shows them injustice. For differences, Franklin’s essay was to learn how to read (and also write), while Gloria’s essay was about having to speaking English and suppressing her various styles of the Spanish language. After reading this fabulous essay, you will understand why the authors chose their topics, their relation to each other, and why they are different. Douglass was raised a black male slave in the 1840’s. For slaves, reading and writing was not acceptable because the man did not want black people to have any sense of resisting slavery. Although that rule was in effect, Douglass found a way to get around that law. He would sneak magazines and newspapers to read, and he was taught how to read and write by his mistress and some “little white boys”, who he’d convert into teachers. Most thought that “...education...
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...Persuasive Essay Olga Acosta COMM/215 Sept. 10, 2014 Craig Westman Persuasive Essay Obama care is the unofficial name of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act That was approved as a law in March 23, 2010. The objective of Obama care is to give access to all American to quality medical insurance according to their economic possibilities and reduce health care spending in the United States. The new health care law is not perfect, but it offers more than what we have now and what we had before. I live in an apartment and it’s located on the second floor; one day I was bringing the garbage and boxes out because we had just recently moved to those apartments and quickly went down the stairs and thinking that it was the last step; I slipped and fell to the ground. I got up quickly but when I started to walk, I felt a great pain in my knee. No one was around and the first thing I did was to ask for help. Luckily my son heard my screams and I could be able to walk home. Sitting on the couch in my house I realized that I had very swollen knee but it would be impossible to drive my car to the hospital so a neighbor took me to the emergency room. We arrived at the hospital and they took a few x-rays and found out that I have a fracture in my knee and needed immediate attention. We live in a border with Mexico and for me it was very easy to cross the bridge and be treated in Mexico because it is much cheaper the consultations and medicines. This time it was a...
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...altar is the pictures that they use to remember the family members and their friends. Another item they put on the altar is pan de muerto which is bread they only make on the day of the dead. One more of the traditions that that do on the day of the dead are they like to tell stories about their love ones. They like to tell funny stories and stories that can provide good remembrance of them on that day. Some of the stories are something they do or what they did. Two of the countries that celebrate it are Mexico and Spain....
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...History 151 28 March 2013 HIST 151: Final Essay Tlatelolco Massacre The Tlatelolco massacre was one of Mexico’s worst bloody events. It took place in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (“Scare of the Three Cultures”) during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968. Ten days before the Olympic Games, a group of 10,000 students decided to protest against the government’s oppression. Unfortunately the government sent the army to control the event and opened fire on the group of students and killed hundreds of them. All those innocent lives killed ten days before the opening ceremony of the 1968 Summer Olympic Games made a lot of noise in Mexico but also in the whole world. At that time, the Mexican propaganda controlled the media and let the citizens know that the group of students was hostile to the army, which explained the actions of the president and therefor the soldiers. The official paperwork was only available to the public in 2000. These documents got Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverria, the Mexican president and his interior minister at that time in a lot of trouble, not only after the massacre but also after the publication of the government’s documents. The book I chose is Massacre in Mexico (“La Noche de Tlatelolco”) written by Elena Poniatowska. The book takes place in Mexico City during the year of 1968. During this period, Mexico has many political repressions. At this time it is also a year of searching and aspirations by students and the labor...
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...of many different people and cultures the expectance of negative aspects, assumptions, or generalizations is not uncommon and can be summed up in the concept of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is defined as the tendency to believe that one’s own race or ethnic group is the most important and that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. (Wikipedia, 2009) Directed by Patricia Riggen, the film “La Misma Luna” also known as “Under the Same Moon” provides viewers with a glimpse of what life is like in the Mexican culture. While also introducing Mexican values and norms the film also addresses stereotypes and cultural biases distorted throughout the world. The drama, “Under the Same Moon” centers on a young boy’s journey across the US and Mexico border to be reunited with his mother. (Riggen, 2007)The Mexican adolescent, Carlito lives with his grandmother while his mother works as a maid in Los Angeles, California. Carlito’s mother, Rosario hopes to save up enough money and someday send for her child. When the grandmother dies unexpectedly, Carlito must sneak across the border and seek out his mother. Throughout this heartwarming and inspirational film, Carlito’s struggle to cross the border was depicted. Often called the “forgotten people” because of their lack of inclusion in history books, Mexican Americans are portrayed either in a negative light or as a stereotype. (Oracle Education Foundation, 2008) The comparison of Mexico and the United States...
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...a border that differentiates one person from another. When one thinks about the term “borders” usually the first thing to come to mind is geographical borders like a state line or country border. For example, one border that we in Clemson can relate to is the border that separates North Carolina/Georgia from South Carolina. To me, “borders” means many things, specifically, I feel it means characterizing in order to separate into groups whether it is a person, place, or thing. Over the past few weeks, I have encountered many readings and a film that truly help clarify what borders are and how each type is unique by focusing on the borders themes of Language Use,...
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