Hisham Matar’s 2009 novel, In The Country of Men, offers up the narrative of a child, Suleiman, a boy living under a dictatorship and a family that keeps secrets from him. Through Suleiman, Matar reveals an interpretation of life under a dictatorship through expressing a child’s experiences and views of betrayal and loyalty. Matar symbolizes this child as the nation under a dictatorship. In particular, Matar attempts to further express the transformation of people living under a dictatorship by symbolizing the child, Suleiman’s, through many encounters with betrayals and secrets from his family members, conversion from a naive, ignorant, and subdued boy to an exposed and even malicious and powerful “man”.…
Poem taken from a section of the book “From the Devil’s Pulpit”. It is also a quote from this…
El Norte, a 1983 film directed by Gregory Nava, depicts the life of two indigenous teenagers who flee their native country, Guatemala, in search for a better life in America. The reason for fleeing is due to the ethnic and political oppression of the Guatemalan Civil War. The film builds up a strong connection shared between Enrique and Rosa, one of genuine feeling and fierce emotion. This connection is foregrounded by the exaggerated style and is often compared to adulterated relations among Hispanics. Such a differentiation is proposed to underline the strain on the social connection created by the financial aspects of migration. In both Enrique’s and Rosa’s hopes of pursuing the “American Dream”, their fantasies of a better life are both…
Muñoz structures his essay by sharing his personal stories with his readers. He shared the time when he finds real "intriguing" when he watches American people butcher his family's name. He even shared the time when during graduation, a math teacher would perfectly pronounce the names of people from Spanish-speaking countries for the kids' parents in the audience. Another structure he used in his essay was the comparison between Americans and Mexicans. His purpose in starting with a name heard over the intercom at the Fresno Airport was because he heard it from a gate agent, who he found out was Mexican, which her pronunciation of…
Imagine living during the reign of Trujillo’s oppressing regime in the Dominican Republic. The events the occurred during this time were horrific, whether it was torture, or the assassination of innocent people Trujillo and his men were always instating fear in the people of the Dominican Republic.…
The theme of Dominican history is the focal point of the novel. In the opening pages Diaz explains that this novel is for “those of you who missed you mandatory two seconds of Dominican history” (Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, p. 2). In an interview with Slate Magazine Diaz explained that he had to read hundreds of books about the Trujillo regime, as well ask numerous Dominicans for local stories. This is where many of the nicknames Diaz uses in the novel to call Trujillo originate. He refers to Trujillo as “the failed cattle thief”, “T-zillo”, and “El Jefe” (Diaz, The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao P. 110). The importance of understanding the way people felt about Trujillo is a crucial aspect to understanding the significance of what Diaz is trying to explain in his stories of Oscar’s family. Diaz uses an epigraph taken from the La Nacion newspaper to explain the impact Trujillo had on the people. “Men are not indispensible. But Trujillo is irreplaceable. For Trujillo is not a man.…
Shacochis' new novel, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, fuses his narrative versatility and his deep understanding of multiple cultures into what Robert Olen Butler calls hismagnum opus. Its suspense revolves around the murder in Haiti of stunningly beautiful Jackie Scott, but before its far-reaching web of interactions ends, it brilliantly unveils the darker regions of human sexuality, evoked inside a historical build-up of international political deceit—deceit with present-day consequences. They are realistic consequences, in fact, that have arguably landed on the doorstep of America in 2013.…
The story of immigrant struggles is the major theme in Drown by Junot Diaz. Every immigrant has a personal story, pains and joys, fears and victories. This book captures the fury and alienation of the Dominican immigrant experience very well. Drown brings out the conflicts, yearnings, and frustrations that have been a part of immigrant life for centuries. In each of his stories, Diaz uses a first-person narrator who is observing others. Boys and young drug dealers narrate eight of these tales. Their struggles shift from life in the barrios of the Dominican Republic to grim existence in the slums of New Jersey. The characters in these stories wrestle with recognizable traumas. Yunior and Rafa in Ysrael and Fiesta 1990 confront the pain of growing up, the loss of innocence, and how misfortune just happens to fall upon them. The book argues of a world in which fathers are gone; people fight with determination for their families and themselves.…
ter a period of political and economic turmoil under dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (commonly known by the initial FSLN or as the Sandinistas) came to power in Nicaragua in 1979 supported by much of the populace and elements of the Catholic Church. The government was initially backed by the US under Jimmy Carter, but the support evaporated under the presidency of Ronald Reagan in light of evidence that the Sandinistas were providing help to the FMLN rebels in El Salvador. The US imposed economic sanctions and a trade embargo instead which contributed to the collapse of the Nicaraguan economy in the early to mid-1980s. While the Soviet Union and Cuba funded the Nicaraguan army, the US financed the contras in neighboring Honduras with a view towards establishing a friendly government in Nicaragua. Nicaragua won a historic case against the U.S. at the International Court of Justice in 1986 (see Nicaragua v. United States), and the U.S. was ordered to pay Nicaragua some $12 billion in reparations for undermining the nation's sovereignty.…
Plunkett, Hazel. Nicaragua in Focus: a Guide to the People, Politics and Culture. Brooklyn, NY: Interlink, 1999. Print.…
Anzaldua, Gloria. “Borderlands/La Frontera.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 1017- 1030. Print.…
It is difficult to overlook how the conflicts in Central American countries are themes in the Cariboo Café, El Norte, The Tattooed Soldier, and multiple other readings this semester. In “Cariboo Café,” written by Helena Maria Viramontes, conflicts in Central American are a theme because the reader is constantly reminded of the reason why they came to the United States of America in the first place. For example, from the first paragraph the reader is informed that the family is cautious around authority figures including the police and especially La Migra. The reader gets a feeling that government corruption or an oppressive government forced the family out of their previous country. Furthermore, the oppressive government that the United States…
I knew after reading the first few paragraphs of Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (1987) that she was going to have a lot to say. In this passage Anzaldua expresses the challenges she faced growing up in America as a Chicano. She gives a brief breakdown of who she is, where she comes from and which languages she prefers to speak. Her argument starts off explaining how she was made to be ashamed of existing. She then walks us through how she overcame the tradition of silence. Inspired by Mexican movies since her childhood, it was the shock of reading a published Chicano novel that gave her the strength to bite back. She wrote” When I saw poetry written in Tex-Mex for the first time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like we really existed as people” (pg40).…
As you can see, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most important Latin American novels to ever be written. The story depicts the life of what was once an ordinary town in Colombia forever changed by a murder which was inspired by a death of Marquez’s friend. He also displays the dominance men have over women and how the town expects both genders to behave. It is these reasons why I acknowledge why the book is not only of the most important books in Latin American literature, but one of the best ever…
This is a story revolving around a rotation of drama between a married couple (Amanda and Julian) and their five growing boys who have witnessed the shaping of the decade, and their growing involvement in the country’s politics. It details the struggles and the changes that the people have to face under Marcos’regime in his proclamation of Martial Law. Events went along smoothly from 1970’ til 1975’ but as the familial drama heats up, Amanda’s eldest son joins a militant group, her other son Emmanuel writes in a communist propaganda and another son gets a girl pregnant. During the period of ’76-’79 things are slowed down a great deal of changes when her children find to be the voice of reason and understanding. They were strengthen by their beliefs and their different outlooks in life leading them the way to the road of impending struggles.…