Mexican Culture Vs South American Culture

Essay #2 Final This course has taught me to become a better critical thinker and to obtain a better appreciation for the world at a global scale through the use of various works from other countries through their historical and cultural values and contexts. I entered this course not knowing how to properly analyze the cultural and historical elements behind each work from other parts of the world besides the traditional American literature. This course has covered various authors that were influenced or were of Mexican, Caribbean, and South American descent. Because of the cultural diversity of the literature and various works were presented in the course, this allows for students to develop a global appreciation through critically analyzing …show more content…
The types of literature that were assigned to us--the authors were categorized in each of the three segments as Mexican, Caribbean and South American and all were of different cultural values yet all had a story to share. One example was “Bien Pretty” by Sandra Cisneros who had the narrator, Lupe Arredondo, struggle with her identity as she moved from California to Texas and identified her sexual preference of Spanish men (Cisnero, “Bien Pretty” 153). This cultural aspect of having race as a sexual preference not only allows for the understanding that each person has different preferences in terms of a partner, but each person has his or her cultural values embedded within that person. Another example is having a sense of community building and analyzing the characteristics of the short story where some stories, such as “Drown” by Junot Díaz or “Anguiano…” by Sandra Cisnero where the injustices are applicable to society and thus begs the question where people should be aware and act upon them and to fix these problems. Another example is the South American literature section where although some of the stories do not necessarily share the culture, but also reinforces that anyone in any part of the world can create a story that does not necessarily have to be about …show more content…
One example is simply writing the reader responses to analyze each of the works. For each of the short stories, the requirements such as asking questions that inquire on the story’s basis is thinking critically of the story and thus analyzing the themes of the story from the context. Another example is the research paper analyzing the gender and sexuality regarding the short stories over the first two sections. Thinking about how the stories played a role in forming the thesis helped to provide a concise statement about the main theme of the short stories were.Another example is reading other student responses and understanding their ideas when peer-reviewing other works that I would not have thought of. Other students who have had vastly different experiences that I had are more likely to think of new ideas that I personally would not have imagined, and therefore broaden the viewpoint on the