Born on September 13, 1947 in the little town of Jacona, Michoacan, Mexico, lived my aunt Josefa Ortegon. She is the oldest of her twelve brothers and sisters. She was very little when she saw the struggles that her family went through. Her mom couldn’t work due to taking care of her children. So the only one who worked was her father, an alcoholic who would use his money for his addictions and going out with his friends. She felt the urge to take action and help her family in any kind of way that she could.…
When she became a fieldworker, Esperanza had to go to a Mexican fieldworker farm in California to work. Her whole family came except for her grandmother, Abuelita because she broke her ankle in the fire. Esperanza was heartbroken because she had never been separated so far from a Abuelita. At the farm Esperanza met a girl, who was very rude to her, named Marta who convinced other Mexicans to strike for better living arrangements. Mama became sick with Valley Fever after a dust storm and later came down with Pneumonia when she was admitted into the hospital.This scared Esperanza because she could have gotten her fired. After the moment her mother got sick, Esperanza decided that she need to be the money maker in the house so she could pay for Mama’s doctors and medicine. Esperanza experience so many feelings in such a short amount of time, that it was clear to her that she needed to become the la patrona-head of the…
Doña Guadalupe Gomez is a mother that sells breakfast to the local miner and washes their clothes. She is a Yaqui Indian that was saves from Leonides Camargo and adopted when he went to her town and started burning their buildings. She had hard times when she was young but when she grows up she had a family and took care of them even though her husband left them to look for a job. She will do anything to take care of her family; she will even hide here daughter in manure so soldiers will not take them. Something that she did that was brave was that she stood up for her son; she went up to him and gave him a gun so he can shoot La Liebre when his mom step free and them run for his life. Doña Margarita Silveria also has a similar life as Doña Guadalupe Gomez they both want to escape from Mexcio and they want to save their family. Doña Margarita Silveria lives in Los Altos de Jalisco with her family and they are traveling to cross the border. Doña Margarita Silveria tries her best to have food for her family every…
In Esperanza Rising a girl named Esperanza who lives in Aguascalientes, Mexico around the 1930’s is shown to have a good life. Her dad owns a vineyard, a mother who cares about her, and a grandma who loves her. She has everything you could ask for tons of servants, plenty of toys, and basically the 1930’s…
Eva’s desire to rise from her social status only grew as she got older. Eva and her siblings met her legitimate siblings at her father’s funeral in 1926. This fueled Eva’s fire because Eva dreamed of the day she would grow up to be successful or to be a queen. She wanted to show her father all that she could do; her, an illegitimate child. She was disappointed her father died when she was young, so she could not come find him one day to show off all that she had accomplished. She wished to show her father that she was worth more than her label. Since so much shame came from her label, she desired to show…
Michelle Alexander depicts the grim reality for many young African American men in today’s society in her book the New Jim Crow. The harsh reality for many of them is that they will never be able to fully participate in mainstream society and receive the benefits and basic rights that are taken for granted by the rest of the nation. Her findings show that existence of the Jim Crow laws have yet to fully disappear from society like many believe they have, when it fact, the restrictions of the Jim Crow era have merely been reinvented in the form of the United States’ federal justice system. Today, the United States prison populations are overwhelmingly comprised of people of color. Since the founding of the United States, African Americans have been “denied citizenship that was deemed essential to the foundation” (Alexander 2010: 1). The name given to this denial was Jim Crow and today even with Barack Obama, a black man, as the President of the this great nation, African Americans are still not treated as equals to whites by continually recreating Jim Crow through the federal justice system. As Michelle Alexander writes, “As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow” (2010: 2).…
McKay, John P., Bennett D. Hill, and John Buckler. "Listening to the Past, Christine De Pisan." A History of Western Society. 7th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 412-13. Print.…
Esperanza grew up in Mexico. Her and her family were part of the upper class and had…
Also, she tells us about her bad experience as a child, she attended a lot of funerals. When she was young, she saw the death around her in every place. For an example, in her article “we are ugly, but we are here,” she says, “when I was eight, my uncle’s brother-in-law went on a long journey to cut cane in the Dominican Republic. He came back deathly, I'll.” Also, the women in her society do no have any rights, but they still have a hope in tomorrow. They believed that “if a life is lost, then another one springs up replanted somewhere…
In 1978, the year I was born, Maria Teresa joined a human rights group called CO-MADRES. (The Mothers and Relatives of Political Prisoners, Disappeared and Assassind of El Salvador) Due to her husband being jailed and severely tortured after a sugar mill strike she found herself unsuspectingly thrown into a political arena. It is her work with this organization that begins to completely consume her life and is the core of the entire…
Spectacle based in the life of the Argentinian leader Eva Peron, who was the second wife of the president Juan Domingo Peron. Evita embodies many important events and symbols related to Argentina during the 1940´s and the 1950´s. As a reference, the European tour, which was organized by Eva in 1946 in order to foster Argentina international relationships.…
Two different women born in two very different places, Dorothy Fanny and Maria Guadalupe Felix share two different experiences through interviews and share a wealth of memories and rich insight of their ever maturing lives. Their place of birth, education, work, and their personal lives are shared as to giving us a glimpse of their mark in history.…
Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson, on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. After her parents divorce in 1931, she and her brother Bailey moved to Chicago with their mother. In 1936, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend. After some hesitation, Marguerite confided in her brother and then to her mother that she had been raped. Shortly after Marguerite had to testify, but her attacker was released. Days after his release he was murdered. Convinced that the death was her fault Marguerite went through four year period where she would not speak to anyone except her brother Bailey. She and Bailey were sent to Arkansas to live with their grandmother (Maya). At the age of twelve, Marguerite started speaking again after she started the study of writing, literature, and music, she became known for her intelligence.…
When Esperanza and her family arrived in Las Angels they started to look for work. When they found work it was for farming and they got a job and started working. When Esperanza tried working she couldn’t because she didn’t know how to do anything on her own.…
She defied all odds and became a renowned international artist, she didn't let anyone tell her what to do, she kept her head high through her many injuries and she embraced herself; even the unconventional parts. She suffered greatly throughout her life and still I could only wish that I could have a fraction of the strength she had. She led a community of people to follow their dreams and believe in themselves. She led the female and Latin community into being not just acknowledged as artists, but highly…