5 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2023
    1. En boca cerrada no entran mosca.J. "Flies don't emer.a dosedmouth" is a saying I kept hearing when I wa.s a child. Serhabladora was to be a gossip and a liar., to talk too much. Mucha-chitas bien criadas, wen-bred girls don't answer bade Es una lattade respeto to talk back to one's mother or father. I remember oneof the sins I'd recite to the priest in the confession box the fewtimes I wem to confession: talking back to my mother, habtar pa''tr'as, repelar. Hocicona, repelona, chismosa, having a big momh,.questioning, carrying tales are aU signs of being mal cNada. In myculture they are all words that are derogatory if applied towomen-I've never heard them applied to men.

      Back in my country there is this say "ese hombre si es mujercita" which means "that man is such a woman". This is used when a man likes to gossip or to talk to much. As if that is all a woman do. It always makes me mad because of the negative symbolism and how it's always used to talk down on women.

    2. When my father died, my mother put blank,ets over themirrors. Consciously, she had no idea why. Perhaps a part of herknew that a mirror is a door through which the soul may "pass"to the other side and she didn't want us to "accidentally" foHowour father m the pla,ce where the souls of the dead live

      This is very interesting, because sometimes we follow traditions that we dont understand or that don't connect us to our roots at all. It's important to point out that living in the U.S. and not wanting to follow something from back home make our family believe that we are too Americanized. However, they ever really explained the reason behind it.

    3. o this day I'm not sure where I found the strength to leavethe sOUJrce, the mother, disengage from my family, mi.#erra, migente, and aU that picture stood for .l~ave home so I 52Pl~AAfind myself, find my own intrinsi~nature,£l.!ri~~ under thepers6iiii1rt}T1:nat hid 'be,en im Eosedoitme." .

      I admire people who immigrated, especially my parents. Until this day I don't know how they were able to leave absolutely everything behind to give me and my siblings a better life. I also find it interesting how they author mentions that they had to leave so they can find themselves. I believe self-finding it's important to shape who we will be in the future .

    4. In the 1800s, Anglos migrated megally into Texas, whichwas then part of Mexico, i.n greater and greater numbers andgradually drove the .tejanos (native Texans of Mexican descent)from their lands,. committing aU manner of atrocities againstthem. Their illegal invasion forced Mexico to fight a war to keepits Texas territory.

      Yet their descendants would oppose to what is illegal immigration today. This reminds me a lot of what a lot of Americans are doing today. They go to live in Latin America because the cost of living is lower than in the U.S. Which is pushing the locals out. It's so easy to say that Latin American countries are cheap when their salary is in dollars.

    5. The V.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where theThird World grates against the first and bleeds. And be.fore a scabforms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds mergingto form a third country-a border cu]tur,e. Borders are set up todefine the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us fromthem.

      It's interesting to see how a "third world" country is literally right next to a "first world" country. I find it interesting how the author says that the borders separate "us" from "them" and the "safe" from the "unsafe". In a way, I feel like this has a lot to do with how the media looks at immigrants, especially the ones that cross the border.