Eng 135
Essay #1 Expository
GROWING UP HISPANIC I could not imagine myself being anything else but Hispanic. I had an interesting up bringing by a Puerto Rican mother that was strict, in your face, no nonsense, and a loving mother and by a Dominican father that was care free, laid back, funny, easy to talk too, and loving. I guess I can say I had the best of both worlds due to the fact that I am half Puerto Rican and half Dominican. Even though I identify myself with my Puerto Rican side a lot more than I can identify with my Dominican side. I still love the fact that even though Dominicans are Hispanic and we speak somewhat the same language Puerto Rican and Dominicans are so different in the way that we live, eat, raise our children, educated themselves. My father’s upbringing was a very comfortable one due to the fact that my Grand Father was rich. Sugar cane being big on the islands, my Grand Father had many which contributed to the money in our family. My father being the oldest of ten would make you think that he had the most responsibility when in actuality it was the opposite. When my father was 18 he went off to war and was smuggled out of the Dominican Republic into Mexico, he fought for a short period of time. At the end of that time he ended up in New York. In New York, my father was the manager of a dry cleaning business for the rich and the famous, among those Rockefeller was one of his clients. My mother’s upbringing on the other hand was a very poor, very strict one, due to the fact that she was the third oldest of seven children. My Grand Father on my mother’s side was a mechanic while my Grand Mother was a homemaker, so because my Grand Mother didn’t work that contributed to my mother’s poor upbringing. On a family visit to New York, my mother lied about her age to get a job in the dry cleaners my father managed in order to help out