Preview

By the Lake of Sleeping Children

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
517 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
By the Lake of Sleeping Children
As I read ?By the Lake of Sleeping Children?, I find it monotonous playing in the same tune as Across the Wire. Both books have dealt with what life is like for those living on the Mexican side of the border living in poverty, unsanitary conditions and economic hardships. These crises have illustrated why so many are faced to make the dangerous and illegal journey across the United States. In ?By the Lake of Sleeping Children? Urrea takes these dramatic scenes and shows a flawed NAFTA.

The key to sociologist Karl Marx, is the idea of social conflict which means struggle among segments of society over valued resources (Sociology 99). NAFTA North American Free Trade Association was established to bring economic growth however the large corporations are there for a profit and Tijuana residents will continue to suffer under terrible environmental devastation. Urrea tells about the dompe, an area in Tijuana known for its deplorable living conditions by mass squatters settlements having poor drinking water and inadequate sewage treatment. These people are living in these terrible conditions and I am sure they want a better life for themselves but how can this be achieved when large Multi-national Corporation?s move is to focus exclusively on profit over environmental well-being. In my opinion the implementation of NAFTA will cause more harm to these grief stricken people. The increasing industrialization in Mexico as a result of NAFTA can have an environmental impact on health. Hazardous wastes from their factories and oil operation spills in the water can cause massive heath problems to the residents. In an effort to gain more profit and to have their cops flourished pesticides use on the land could also be life threatening. It seems that nothing can be done about these big time capitalists that are only out for self gain. Because of Tijuana?s economic situation the government probably do not have the finance to monitor what is being done. Spending money on

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Tomas Rivera gives us this book showing us that during the 40’s and 50’s(20th century) Mexican immigrants were treated very inequitable manner. Depicting the struggles and hardships, he's able to make the reader sympathize with the characters and their stories. Stories such as “The Children Couldn't Wait” and ”It's That It Hurts” are a pretty great example that shows us the discrimination towards the immigrant children and how they are denied access to water, and quality education. Rivera also shows us the migrant workers determination, facing many struggles, including a death in the family these workers still work hard in order to move on and progress in the hopes of a better living. This can be seen in “ The Children Couldn't Wait” in the…

    • 308 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A young teen, Viviana “Andazola” Marquez, struggled most of her childhood to find a warm, cozy place to sleep each night. Marquez’s mother and father divorced when she was attending the third grade. After the divorce, she, her mother, her sister, her two younger brothers stayed many nights on different strangers’ kitchen floors. Throughout the majority of their life they did not know if the strangers would open their homes up to them; not knowing if they had a place to sleep was devastating. When she reached the age of thirteen, Marquez’s mother was arrested for disturbing the peace because she was not documented, she was moved to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At this time, this tragedy served as a breaking point for this family.…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    While the book, which mainly spent effort on puzzling together a complete and continuous narrative, took measurements greatly on personal experiences, the film, which instead chose a camera, offered abundance in visual aids, perhaps also a little music. The very essence of both the book and the film is to draw forth positive emotions of the general population who can eventually benefit the child immigrants, at least in theory, by either relaxing the…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Author Amanda Rose has taken it upon herself to bring to light the horrific experiences of modern day immigrant’s flight to freedom through the Sonoran Desert. In addition to addressing the immigrant’s plight, she calls into question the immigration process or lack thereof, the United States legislative broken immigration policy, religious leaders and their roles, US Border Patrol and US citizens. Her intent is to open up a dialogue on US immigration policies and educate the American public on the devastating consequences of a hapless built dividing wall between two countries which are felt not only by the immigrants but by the people that live in and around the border. Rose illustrates the conflicts that everyday Americans citizens living on the border face in trying to help and solve border issues with their personal solutions. Do they work? Are they…

    • 1358 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Child of the Americas” by Aurora Levins Morales is a poem about an American who came from a mixture of numerous cultures that formed her heritage and her character as an American. This poem’s focal points are on cultural diversity and the viewpoint of immigrants in the American society. In my opinion, this poem was intriguing because it bought to light many of the racial and ethnic discrimination we endure in the world today, and also leaves the reader speculating about his/ her own cultural background and upbringing. As an American with a diversified background myself, I am able to relate with much of what the author talks about within her poem.…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 2008, about 8,000 were apprehended at the border; last year there were nearly 24,500, mostly coming from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.” The numbers immigration crossing the border are still high but not as high when Nazario when she published the book “Enrique’s Journey.” In a book review a the writer says “For example, Nazario reports that in 2001, an estimated 48,000 children from Central America and Mexico entered the U.S. without their parents and without legal authorization” (p. 265). This shows the rate of how…

    • 820 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    border is filled with violence and society should be aware of all the danger. This story reveals Troncoso’s experience of the insecurity and danger along the border. The drug violence has bloodstained money and power against the civilians living along the border. We can see that the violence along the border can even affect distant families that live in New York such as Troncoso’s not just the population living in the border. Troncoso, just as many other Mexican American families have felt the loss of their Mexican culture due to the insecurities across the border without being able to express their authentic Mexican culture to their future generations. The essential idea of freedom in a place filled with danger is unexplainable for the civilians living so close to Mexico and U.S. without being able to connect their cultures leaving behind their memories. Hope is the only word that keeps them alive in this world filled with corruption along the U.S. and Mexican…

    • 1568 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel Border Odyssey, Professor Charles Thompson travels along the Mexican-US border with his wife and other travel companions to better understand the relationship between the two countries. Even though Thompson had traveled to different areas of the border before, this was his first trip attempting to cover its entirety. Thompson is currently a professor at Duke and spends a portion of his trip with students involved in an immigration experience for the summer. Much of his life’s work has been about understanding the flow of migrants into the United States, the push and pull factors the draw them in and what little can keep them out. Thompson’s encounters with people on both sides of the border give the audience an understanding of…

    • 1711 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In 1983, a violent civil war broke out in Sudan that displaced thousands of young children as they fled for safety. Many died in the process of traversing over the arid desert until finally reaching the Kakuma refugee camp where they would be known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” The Good Lie, written by Maragret Nagle, is a poignant story of a group of three Lost Boys, as they must adjust to the different lifestyle and culture found in America. Parallels can be drawn from both stories of the Hmong immigrating and the Lost Boys immigrating. Both groups are refugees of war seeking safety in America. Both groups are thrown into an urban culture with no prior understanding of. Both groups are haunted by their dark traumatic pasts. Except there is a striking contrast between the two groups, the Lost Boys know how to speak English before arrival. Although the American culture is vastly different than the Sudanese, the Lost Boys are blessed with an easier time assimilating into mainstream society because of their prior knowledge of English. Speaking English helps provide the men with opportunities to find work right away, so they can be one step closer to being financially independent. Even if the jobs are marginal now, they are on the pathway for a brighter future later; unlike the Hmong who are forced to receive federal assistance from the government because of their…

    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Out In The Cold

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “You think I want this life? You think I want this life?....I hate this life,” (Out in the Cold). A man named Jerry said this when John Koepke and J.D. O’Brien interviewed him on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Koepke and O’Brien were making a documentary about the homeless called Out in the Cold based off of real interviews with several homeless people as they spent a week in winter living in shelters or on the streets. They created this documentary to create awareness for the homeless and to create sympathy for them. Many times Americans look down on people who are homeless, but most of the time the homeless do not have any choice. Being homeless is not their fault because of certain circumstances in their life. These circumstances are: a loss of a job, unable…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    dying to cross

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The book covers the immigrant tragedy of May, 2003, when a truck-trailer of at least 74 illegal immigrants due to how the truck was abandoned, the true number involved is unknown and will probably remain so was found near Victoria, Texas, bound for Houston 48 customers from Mexico, 16 from Honduras, 8 from El Salvador, 1 from Nicaragua, and at least 1 from the Dominican Republic. Nineteen people were dead. The story and images of the bodies piled one atop another was headline news for weeks, often described as a "human heap of desperation" which it surely was. Much of the attention was focused on the 5-year old boy found among the dead. Ramos retraces some of the border-crossings made, interviews some survivors & the Mexican consul who handled the affairs that followed, as well as covers the legal proceedings that lead to the guilty pleas of several coyotes, including Honduran Karla Chavez who, according to US. Authorities, was the ringleader of the operation, and the one ultimately responsible for the tragedy.…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Pre-Undergraduate Pre-sessional Programme Summer 2014 Portfolio Title: Evaluate the positive and negative effects of globalisation on Mexico Student name: Marcelo Akira Matuda Baccarini Student number: M00508077 Final word count: ###### Project Teacher: Jeff The Oxford dictionary define globalisation as the process by which businesses or other organization develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.…

    • 689 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    When these children cross the border they are sent to a center to live in. These centers aren’t all that great. Immigrant children have protested peacefully about the harsh conditions at some centers. These children were confined in their rooms and were not allowed to contact each other. The children were various other unacceptable treatment. This harshness had eventually stopped when the immigrant children took action and told a local teacher’s law school students of their center’s horrible conditions, and they notified the U.S. government. Soon after the private holding center stopped housing immigrant children.…

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In a Grove

    • 4398 Words
    • 18 Pages

    The body was lying flat on its back dressed in a bluish silk kimono and…

    • 4398 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the Woods

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the Woods by Tana French takes place in a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984. There were three children who went in the woods to play. When their mothers begin to call them to tell them to come home none of the children answered the call. When the police came, they find only one out of the three children holding on a tree trunk in terror, sneakers are filled with blood, and is not able to remember any details of what happened earlier in the day. The boy the police found was Adam Ryan. Twenty years later, he became a detective and changed his name to Rob Ryan. He is part of the Dublin Murder Squad and he keeps his past a secret from everyone. But there was a twelve-year-old little girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and his partner Detective Cassie Maddox are investigating the case. He realizes that it is like his past and that the case was unsolved. In order to solve this case Detective Ryan has to recover some memories to guide him to uncover the little girl’s murder and his own shadowy past.…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays