No Name Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston

Reading this short story actually made me sad. I find it so sad how a village finds it okay to torment someone the way they did to the author's aunt. Sure, back then if a woman were to get pregnant from someone other than husband or without having a husband, it would be looked down on. However, it is entirely their own choice what they do with their body and their lives. A baby should be seen as a blessing and not some evil abomination. The fact that they all came to her house and started going completely ballistic, acting as animals is just plain sad. How could those people live with themselves especially after knowing they were the cause of someone's suicide? People seriously judge way too much, especially things that are none of their business.

When Eating Organic was Totally Uncool

After reading this article, I thought it was rather funny and sort of ironic how at first, eating organically was considered something of the less fortunate. Back then they had to grow their food in secrecy and they were ashamed to do it. They hated the fact that the food they ate was produced differently then everyone else's. Now in modern day, it turns out that eating organically is a luxury. You can only get your hands on organic food if you have the money to pay for it. People consider it to be fancy when you're eating organically. However, people never really give credit or remember where it all came from. Organic food turned out to actually be way healthier than what every one else was eating. I personally believe organic food should be available to everyone, but we all know money is such an issue. I wonder how the Hmong feel about starting a new trend.

Borderlands/La Frontera

In the text "Borderlands/La Frontera" Anzaldua speaks of her struggle to assimilate with American culture and being almost forced to lose her Mexican one. Something that really struck me from the text was when she mentioned that she was placed in a class that taught her how to get rid of her accent. How do you teach someone to get rid of their accent? To me this is such an unreasonable request. It shocks me that her mother would also go along with this and get angry at her for speaking with an accent and not sounding American enough. One of the things that makes America such a beautiful country is the diversity within it. All the different people from around the world who come to live here and strive for a better future is what it's really all about. Forcing someone to lose their accent is almost like teaching someone to not have a unique personality. Accents and culture make us who we are. How often do you see someone with a different accent and then all of a sudden here them speaking without it and think to yourself, "wow they sound so weird". People from different cultures should follow in Anzaldua's footsteps and fight to keep their culture. They should stay true to their roots and not be so quick to give up what makes them unique.

Dutiful Hijas: Dependency, Power & Guilt

In the text Dutiful Hijas, Martinez speaks of an issue that we commonly see throughout hispanic culture. The pressure for young women to live up to the expectations of their mothers and abide by the tradition to take care of them until their dying day. I find this to be quite a peculiar situation in the sense that due to the whole obligation outlook on the topic, it sort of makes the act not genuine. Caring for your mother should not be looked at as a duty. It should be something that comes from your own personal desire to care for someone who has given their all to you. The fact that mothers  place this moral obligation on their daughters and deprive them of the choice on how to live out their lives creates a sense of resentment between the mother/daughter relationship. If they did not feel forced into this life of duty, they would certainly be more willing to do it on their own. They would be living a life they choose and then when it comes time that the mother is sick, a genuine act of love would be demonstrated and they would automatically rush to their mother's side. This is also an act that should be evenly distributed amongst all the mother's children regardless of gender. This is just something that's supposed to come naturally to us, to care for our mothers as they care for us.

Little Failure

Throughout Gary Shteyngart's memoir we see him expressing his feelings about his family, his life and sharing his experiences with us. The struggles he faced with the pessimism of his parents, the hardships of migrating from a different country and adapting to the environment are all frankly common struggles many of us have. Our parents really expect the most from us & at times may seem unreasonable. There is no say to who's in the wrong in the whole parent-child situation. Every family handles situations differently & every set of parents & children are different as well. Gary's parents put him down most of his life by labeling him "Little Failure". They were not very supportive towards his passion for writing. I believe Gary's parents did indeed know he was success & truly an intelligent child, they just did not know how to express it. They wanted him to be better & not get too confident, as most parents do. Gary shouldn't have had to grow up with such a low self esteem however. He should've been reassured every now & then that he was worth something and not a failure. Many parents do not understand the right way to support their children and very so often allow their own personal thoughts & desires influence the way they act towards them. They often get so caught up in the life they wish they had for themselves that they forget to step back & look at the bigger picture which would be, What makes your child happy? They let it get the best of them & this leads to parents seeing their children as failures. Such hurtful words can be detrimental to a child's growth.

The Color Complex

In The Color Complex, it states that "in order for slavery to gain moral acceptance on the Englishmen lawmakers, it was essential to foster a belief that Africans were less than fully human". This is pure inhumanity to me due to the fact that it was out of their own selfishness that Whites wanted to engage in sexual relationships with blacks. When they started creating a population of interracial children they decided it was time to check their conscience? They decided it was a smart idea to pass antimiscegenation laws as if they were doing a huge favor to the Whites by separating them from the "lower life form" that was the blacks. If sex with blacks was considered beastiality, why were the Englishmen taking advantage of the enslaved women? The white slave owners needed something to save their conscience and make themselves feel better which is complete hypocrisy. For the black and whites that actually fell in love during this time period, extremely unfortunate and unfair. They should not be punished for the selfish acts of the White Englishmen. The African women certainly did not desire to be raped and taken advantage of. I think it is pretty safe to say that the real beasts here are the White slave owners.