Losing Latin America
The tradition of storytelling has always been an integral aspect of Hispanic culture. Thus, it would make sense that Latino authors would make it a point to discuss and impart their knowledge of their culture to others through their writing. Such is the case with writers such as Richard Rodriguez, Julia Alvarez, and Gary Soto. Here, we will look at a short story from each of these authors, and how it relates to the Hispanic oral tradition of storytelling, and more generally, how it portrays Hispanic culture as a whole. In "The Fear of Losing a Culture," Richard Rodriguez expounds on exactly that idea-the fear of losing his beloved Hispanic culture as it assimilates itself into American culture. T
By imparting his fears to others, he is carrying on that important oral tradition, in an attempt to let those generations after him, become aware of the growing threat of lost culture. Much of Julia Alvarez's work is also based around the loss of an identifiable Latin American culture or identity. Gary Soto also takes on the theme of assimilation into a new culture in his story, "Looking for Work". He tried to convince his siblings to wear shoes to dinner and improve their appearance so that "[w]hite people would like us more. "Life is a dream, and dreams are dreams," the narrators father declares in the story, but it seems as if Alvarez's dream, as it is expressed in this story and throughout all of her works, is for Latin Americans to be accepted with their culture intact, rather than forced to assimilate to a new way of life. " Certainly it would seem that he too wishes for an America where he and his family were accepted rather than forced to change. here is a real grave fear in the Latin American community, according to Rodriguez, of losing the parts of the Latin American culture that make it vibrant and alive, in order to tone it down for assimilation into the United States, which is a more literal culture than that from which Rodriguez has emerged. Gary explains that he wanted to imitate the Anglo families of the television programs that he continually watched. The Latin American culture, as we can see in this work, is vibrant and alive, and deserves the opportunity to stay that way. What these authors seek is essentially atonement with their own culture, which has gotten lost in the maze of fast food restaurants and shopping malls that purports itself to be America. Her novels, such as How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and Yo! reveal her thoughts and ideas on the identity theme; it is in her book of collected essays, Something to Declare, that she states her concepts directly.
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,
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Acceptance Essays
