We're being asked to commit a lot of time and energy to an enterprise with very little in the way of guarantee of what’s in it for us. That’s where the seduction comes in. And it wants to tell us what it thinks is important, so much so that it can't wait to get started.
I really like the way this is interpreted and worded. I am an avid reader and feel there is much truth in this statement. The art of seduction is truly applied in each and every book
because there's enough doom and gloom in the world without looking for more.
I personally dont do this with books but with most investigative shows like 48hrs. Hearing the type of things we as humans are capable of is more frightening than anything else.
We understand it, and we don't. It's irreducible; it can't be summarized or described; we feel something we can't describe.
I can relate to this soooo much. It is amazing how we are able to feel indescribable things merely by reading a passage in a book or looking at an art piece. Sometimes there are feeling you can't describe but are so strong you are able to senses if others can understand.
It took me years to see the beauty in his paintings
This is another great observation in how we do not always recognize beauty but with time and growth we are able to see beautiful things we didn't always recognize. It is a good reference to how many year ago we saw gay, black, and heavier set people in a more negative light and now we have them as role models and actual models.
Is there a meaning of beauty on which we can agree?
I find this sentence very appealing, its a question we all ask but no one has an answer. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we all of some general idea of what beauty is but still what some find beautiful others think differently.
Which is to say
I honestly can't really strongly identify the reason of the repetition behind the use of this before every paragraph despite possibly going back to what she initially said on how she can't identify what she really means or know exactly how she go to where she is which is why she is constantly translating her action to something else.
I stumbled around a while, came to writing late, went off to study it. And kept writing and submitting and believing I had something important to say.Here's what I don't say:I'm not always sure how I did it, or what that means exactly.
This is really relatable. You do not always understand yourself or can explain how you do something one way or another it gets done and you know you did it right or the way you intended to.
To help reinforce this pathological delusion,
the delusion that she is rich when she is not and how she is romantisizing aspects of her life?
Two years later, when I was in junior high, I was enrolled in my school's ESL program. Although I was happy to finally be in a self-contained class full of English learners like me, it was humiliating to be in those classes
Despite doing what they being the school wants you are still considered an outsider and by being in a class that is required of you you are humiliated for not knowing what they want you to.
I was also risking the loss of my mother tongue
The idea of this is crazy to me, the limitation imposed on children before for simply using the language they were born speaking is horrible. How would it be taken if when we colonized and took land we were the ones required to learn their languages and abandon our own.
From the time I was seven, teachers had been punishing me for not knowing my lessons by making me stick my nose in a circle chalked on the blackboard. Ashamed of not understanding and fearful of asking questions, I dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
This really shows the mistreatment of latinos in early ages and how due to issues like these it would cause a negative effect in children's education or in his case dropping out all together.
At a very early age I had a strong sense of who I was and what I was about and what was fair. I had a stubborn will. It tried constantly to mobilize my soul under my own regime, to live life on my own terms no matter how unsuitable to others they were. Terca. Even as a child I would not obey. I was “lazy.” Instead of ironing my younger brothers’ shirts or cleaning the cupboards, I would pass many hours studying, reading, painting, writing. Every bit of self-faith I’d painstakingly gathered took a beating daily. Nothing in my culture approved of me. Había agarrado malos pasos. Something was “wrong” with me. Estabá más allá de la tradición.
This entire section is very admirable, she knows who she is and what she wants to be and not want to be. It is also relatable on how by not doing certain things that are expected of you can make other see you in negative ways simply because you are not living up to their expectation of what you should be doing.
sonrisa
Sonrisa translates to smile, I love this Spanish word because simply saying it for me at least evokes positivity. Almost like when you say sonrisa you are forced to smile.
Since a child, the river and its veins of canalswere places for me to think. Places to heal.Once on the river’s bed, I began to cleanse.I ran.
Now as an adult he can no longer find peace in his thoughts, he feels he cannot feel and now running away is his only option.
I brushed away roaches that meanderedacross their faces,but not even that could wake them.
I'm assuming the children are dead? The mother is making a small motherly gesture to her children that can no longer acknowledge her.
I don’t love my country.
I can in some ways relate to this statement. So many people take pride in where they come from and have this type of love for their country/hometown but I tend to think why does everyone think where we are is so great.
from dictators in our neighborhoods,who wore blue suits and broke our doors downwhen they wanted, arrested us when they felt like,swinging clubs and shooting guns as they pleased.
describing police officers.
blacks with blacks,poor whites with poor whites,chicanos and indians by themselves.
I notice how it is portrayed that the blacks and poor white men although separated are still together but the Chicanos and Indians seem more alone in a sense.
Our expectations are high: in the old world,they talked about rehabilitation,about being able to finish school,and learning an extra good trade.But right away we are sent to work as dishwashers,to work in fields for three cents an hour.
they say their expectations were high, it is like a great promise was made to them that life would and could be better but ultimately it's not and they see that they were lied to.
JUAREZ & HIDALGO
juarez is a town in hildago Mexico. reminds me of the story the rule maker.
Neighborhood of dilapidated community hall
Dilapidated means to cause something to fall into disrepair. Which makes me think that in a way the writer may be saying that there is someone to blame for this destruction.
Un Trip Through the Mind Jail
one of the first things that I noticed was Raursalinas's use of un instead of A. How he is using a Spanish word in his mostly English title.
LA LOMA
translates to the hill
playing dress-up with our mothers’ clothes
Kind of the start of everything, the beginning of becoming monsters?
We have not become monsters yet.
need to re-read to figure out the exact meaning behind this although I feel it has something to do with them being different.
Rio will crawl the coves without me. He is the gringo who falls through the ice that winter, but he will pull himself out and walk, shivering, back to our house where I will tell him how fucking stupid he is. I will take his clothes off and take my clothes off and press myself against him inside a scratchy mohair blanket.
Rio is mexican is he not, why does he call him gringo?
We learn that what we thought were owls are mourning doves hooting in the trees. We learn that a monarch’s wings are orange with black veins, not orange with black stripes. I look at my veins, blue beneath my skin, and wish I could fly.
Seems really interesting the mention of the doves makes me wonder if that is just where they live or can it be everywhere?
He calls me a faggot first, and then the screen door slams.
They are fighting/arguing
Rio is the bravest boy I know the summer we are fourteen.
repeated sentence
They will make the holy triangle, up and down and side to side.
I feel like this is a negative action for the situation as the last time they did this it was because a boy died.
When I am twenty-eight and expecting my first child I will wonder what had gotten into us that summer and hope my child is not a monster.
expressing regret
We are monsters
is this in reflection of their act of putting on dresses earlier in the story?
Our mothers make the holy triangle up and down and side to side.
use of rosaries I believe, common in catholic religion.
We call anything we cannot explain that June monsters.
How much of what they saw or went through that summer was unexplainable? Why call it monster, what is the significance of the word monster?
Years from now, when our mothers can’t spend every day making tacos for tourists anymore, and I tell them I am too busy to run the place, Authentico will close up. I will buy the sign from them and hang it in my garage.
Is it fair to say that for the son to say this I think it is rude and in some ways ungrateful. I'm not sure why but it just seems wrong the way her put it. After all the work his mother and her friend did, he was able to be raised from the money earned from this stand all for him to put the sign in his garage.
El Lago,
translation to english to the lake
camarones rebozados
looked it up because I live shrimp but did not know the direct translation, it says it is a Philippine dish...Looks good.
I will ask about my father again when I am leaving Marlin Street for college and my mother will ask if they were not enough.
Makes me think of how the mother might find his interest in his father offensive. Do single mother's keep their children's fathers identity out of protection of their child, themselves, or both?
boisterous
Boisterous means to be loud, noisy, full of life.
They asked for what their parents could not. They are not sisters but they shared beds and sleeping bags on the floors of dirty shacks.
Similarity between their mother's childhood and their own.
but our mothers own a taquería on the boardwalk.
What is the relationship between their mothers, why do they live together?
Close enough that our mothers can walk, thumbing their rosaries, to my house and sip mimosas on the porch, where they will laugh like Spanish witches.
What does this symbolize? Spanish Witches?
We get away with too much this summer.
Why does he say too much? Does he think what they are doing is wrong?
The kiss feels like a bug landing on my shoulder. He kisses my lips after he kisses my shoulder.
I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative comparison?
imagine our lives as women and say the things we think they would say.
Imagine. fantasize that they are women/girls.
We clip on earrings and hate their heaviness.
displaying their dislike of normal "girl things"? They know they have to wear earing as girls but dislike it?
gave a lasting truth that SpaniardIndianMestizowere all God’s children.And
"all gods children" almost seems like a statement but also a question to me. As if this is what we are and have been but society's actions have displayed otherwise in a sense.
Cuauhtémoc,
Cuauhtémoc was the Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan and also the last Emperor.
neurosis
Neurosis is to have a mental illness or even physical illness.
king of an empire
form of symbolism? A time where they were free within their own race and did not suffer all the issues they do now?
safety within thecircle of life– MY OWN PEOPLE
Finds comfort in his culture sees as an escape of his current reality.
I owned the land as far as the eye could see under the crown of Spain,
Owned is past tense, reminiscing about the past.
American social neurosis,sterilization of the souland a full stomach.
Displaying the mental pain of abandoning his culture in order to truly survive.
I must choose
He writes how he has to choose what to be and not just be who he is or wants to.
struggle of cultural survival
This epic is published in 1972 to think that the Mexican/ Latin race or people of color are still struggling to survive makes me think how much have we really evolved?
suppressed by manipulation,and destroyed by modern society.
this makes me think about the way our the Mexican race or really any race that is not American has been manipulated to be made out to be something that no longer belongs in our society that favors the majority being the "American" or white race.
An Epic of the Mexican American People
I've never heard the term epic and wanted to see what it meant and here is the definition... a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation.