Dear Followers

I realize that I missed the deadline for the last assignment. But if I could please have some feeback on what I wrote, I would be most thankful. I want to get a sense of what other people think of my writing if you are so inclined. Thanks :)

Page 31 CTZ-RX-1

On page 31 of Mario and Gilbert Hernandez’s “Citizen Rex”, the use of subject-to-subject transitions is relied on heavily to get the intent across to the reader. In the first panel of the page, Mr. Bloggo and Hazel are in a crowd outside that is riled by the news of Citizen Rex being in town. The characters are not speaking to each other, but seem to have contemplative expressions as they look at the scene in front of them. Faint figures of people can be seen in the background who are either arguing to each other or in distress. A sign that says “Rex” in big, bold, stylized letters hangs above the figures. Mr. Bloggo is narrating in this panel and describes how the town was “going crazy” over the news of CTZ-RX-1. He then tells the reader that he and Hazel were looking for some witnesses who claim to have seen Rex.

            The next four panels show characters of an interesting variety, all claiming to have seen the elusive Rex. The first character is a bum on the sidewalk. He’s hunched over, greasy, and his clothes are tattered. He claims that Rex took his shoes when he was asleep in an alley. The next panel is of a young, awkward looking woman in a stark room. Her hair is pitch black with no shine, long, and parted straight down the middle. She has a unibrow, is slightly cross eyed, and her teeth are oversized. She also seems to be wearing no clothes, as the panel cuts off at her clavicle, and no shirt is seen before the panel ends. This character claims that her grandmother saw Rex in a laundry room trying on “unda draws”. The last of the odd characters is an overweight white woman in the fourth panel of the page. She seems to be very rich due to the lavish accessories and furniture she has. The woman has heavy eyeliner, is smoking, and claims that her maid and chauffeur saw
Rex stealing from the groceries they had in their garage. The fourth panel is of a character previously introduced to the reader as Renata Skink’s daughter. Because we have seen this character before, and know her experience with Rex to be true, we can assume that Mr. Bloggo and Hazel take her lead.

            What is most interesting about these four panels is that their bordered in thick black lines, separating them from the previous panel, and all other panels present throughout the comic. This signifies that this sequence of events happens in a different time lapse than the rest of the panels. Because of this, the reader is instantly ordered to view this sequence of events as happening in a slightly different time frame than the rest of the comic.

The way the artist ordered these characters in panels directly next to each other helps the reader get a sense that Mr. Bloggo and Hazel weren’t taking the leads of the first three characters presented until they met Sigmund Skink, Renata Skink’s daughter. For this reason, this page is a hallmark example of how McCloud describes subject-to-subject transitions to work. 

If Citizen Rex is such a celebrity that anyone would lie just to say they’ve seen him, why do you think that people also want him to not be human and, in some cases, want to destroy him?

Miss Clairol Questions

In Helena Maria Viramontes' "Miss Clairol", what does Arlene let fall to the floor in the make-up section of K-Mart? What is the significance of this item to both Champ and Arlene? How do the characters' reactions to seeing the item represent the strong female leads that Helena Viramontes tends to write about?

What does Arlene do after she tells Champ that she'll show her how she can look just as pretty as her on page 166? How is this significant to the characters and the reader? How does this reflect the Mexican-American community at the time?

"Aria" and "...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him".

            As I was reading Rodriguez’s “Aria”, I was instantly reminded of Rivera’s work in “…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.” The themes of childhood innocence and hardship were prevalent throughout, as well as close family relationships.

            In Rivera’s novel, there is an anecdote titled “First Communion” that tells a story about a child who is told that he must confess every sin he has made to the church. He is nervous about forgetting all the sins he’s made, and goes to church with an over—estimated amount of sins so that if he did forget any it would be counted. As I was reading “Aria”, this story kept popping back into my head.

            In Aria, the child is told that he needs to speak English better by the nuns at the school he goes to. The nuns come to his house and talk to his parents about speaking more English in the household, and he’s taken-aback that they’re in his house, because school and home has always been separate to him. Both of the children in these stories have been exposed to new things and they don’t quite know how to deal with it. Both also express either fear or uncertainty about the matter at hand.

            Another vignette from Rivera’s Novel describes how a little boy took the button off his only shirt to give to his teacher so that a class project could be completed. I viewed this action as a deep and powerful desire to belong and to be accepted socially.

            In Aria, Rodriguez wants nothing more than to have a social identity in America. He learns English, and is embarrassed of his parents when they falter in public conversation with an Anglo-American. He, like the little boy in Rivera’s novel, has a deep desire to belong and to be accepted.

            In “When We Arrive” from Rivera’s “… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him”, the characters all have a bit of a desperate need to move forward, not physically, but socially. Most of them feel as if they aren’t going anywhere, and they’re just moving from place to place to do the same work over and over again. This is what Rodriguez was afraid of when he was young. He didn’t want to be stuck because he didn’t know the language of the “gringos”. Although the Spanish language comforted him, and reminded him of home, he also knew that he must learn English to move up in the world and to be socially accepted at the time (1950’s). Once he started learning English, and was using it in the house more often than Spanish, he became more aware of the differences in the languages and found out that certain meanings would be lost in the translation from Spanish to English. He came to the conclusion that assimilation of language would be the best way to learn a language (at the time) if teachers wanted native Spanish speaking students to succeed in America.

            After reading Rivera’s novel and “Aria”, what do you think about bilingualism and language assimilation? Do you think that schools should choose bilingualism over assimilation, or vice versa?

Woman Hollering Creek

            “Not that he isn’t a good man. She has to remind herself why she loves him when she changes the baby’s Pampers, or when she mops the bathroom floor, or tries to make the curtains for the doorways without doors, or whiten the linen. Or wonder a little when he kicks the refrigerator and says he hates this shitty house and is going out where he won’t be bothered with the baby’s howling and her suspicious questions, and her requests to fix this and this and this because if she had any brains in her head she’d realize he’s been up before the rooster earning his living to pay for the food in her belly and the roof over her head and would have to wake up again early the next day so why can’t you just leave me in peace, woman.” (Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros, pg. 49, second paragraph)

            This passage was taken from Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek. In this passage, situated in the middle of the story, she writes about a young Mexican woman named Cleofilas and her conflicting feelings about her abusive husband and her new life in a poor town in Texas. In this part of the story, she is starting to realize that her life will never be like it is in the telenovelas she sees on TV and we are seeing the distancing the husband is inadvertently making between him and her.

            In the quote “Not that he isn’t a good man. She has to remind herself why she loves him when…” the tone of the passage changes from a forced hope to hopelessness on a dime. Here, Cleofilas is trying to reassure herself that there is good in her husband and is trying to see it, but when she tries to remind herself of why she loves him, she recalls a rant that he spat at her that will appear later in the passage.

            “She has to remind herself why she loves him when she changes the baby’s Pamper, or when she mops the bathroom floor, or tries to make the curtains for the doorways without doors, or whiten the linen ” At the use of “Pampers” instead of “diapers” in this sentence, it is clear to see that Cleofilas’ world has been shaped by what she sees on TV. This reminds her of what the husbands she sees on the telenovelas are like and how they shaped what she thought her husband would be like. And the reality of her husband being a rude and abusive man is hard for her to come to terms to. The changing of a baby’s diaper, mopping the floor, making curtains, and whitening linen, while not totally unrelated to her husband, are things that wouldn’t remind most people about the good things in their spouses. So trying to remember what she loves about her husband while explaining the chores she does is hinting at a sense of delaying to find something she can say that is good about him. These chores do symbolize Cleofilas’ drive to smooth everything over though, and to erase the bad and see the good. But at the next line – “Or wonder a little when he kicks the refrigerator and says he hats this shitty house and is going out where he won’t be bothered by the baby’s howling and her suspicious questions,” her husband is really making it hard for her to see anything but the bad in their relationship and in her life. And again, the mood quickly changes from a forced positive to negative.

            The passage continues with this negative tone, building and building to the point where it becomes a rant; “And her requests to fix this and this and this because if she had any brains in her head she’d realize he’s been up before the rooster earning his living to pay for the food in her belly and the roof over her head and would have to wake up again early the next day so why can’t you just leave me in peace, woman.” At the point where the rant begins, there is a sudden shift in writing style. It is written as if Cleofilas’ husband is yelling at her and we are hearing it out of context. As if we were a next door neighbor listening in with intent to gossip.

            The syntax in this passage also lends itself to helping the reader understand Cleofilas’ dilemma. It starts out with a short sentence, then a list, and then a rant that takes up most of the paragraph. Sandra Cisneros wrote the rant as if Cleofilas’ husband was talking to you and she negated the rules of grammar for the sake of the overall effect she wanted the writing style to have on the reader.

            I feel that this passage in particular really encompasses the entire theme of Woman Hollering Creek. It exploits Cleofilas’ passive aggression towards her husband, her husband’s outward aggression towards her, her want of a life like the ones she sees in the telenovelas, and her struggle to find happiness with her own.

            Though I’ve had no experience with abusive relationships, I have always wondered what I would do if I were in one. Would I stay with the one I married, or would I pack up and leave? Probably the latter, but you can never know what you would do in a situation you’ve never been in. For Cleofilas, she had the disillusionment of the telenovelas she had seen to lead her into an inner conflict of judgment upon herself and her husband and what she should do about her relationship with him. Do you think that what we have seen on the television and in the cinemas has shaped what we expect in a relationship?

I Am Joaquin

As I read this poem, I was amazed with all the historical icons Rodolfo Corky referred to. All of the research that went into this piece is admirable on its own, but the way Rodolfo compiled the history of the Mexican people to tell a story of revolution, pride, anguish, and arrogance was simply astounding to me. Rodolfo uses a character named Joaquin to carry the story the poem tries to convey. Joaquin, one man trying to get by in American society, struggling to come to terms with how he and his people are forgetting their history, who they are, and where they came from. Joaquin: the embodiment of Mexican history and culture.

Rodolfo introduces the poem in Spanish, and then quickly changes to English; repeating what was said in the first two lines. This alone represents the pride and traditions that are within Joaquin, the poem’s narrator. The next three lines “confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes, suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society” really set the frustrated and depressed tones that are prevalent throughout the rest of the poem. 

I love how Joaquin (Rodolfo) kept saying “I am Cuauhtemoc” or “I am Nezahualcoyotl”, representing how although he is just one person, he is also many. The history of his people’s culture is a part of him, as it is with everyone. The idea that one person can be many people is very intriguing to me.

                          

Joaquin continues to symbolize his culture’s history in chronological order until he gets to the present. He then starts to represent some American culture; “My blood runs pure on the ice-caked Hills of the Alaskan isles, on the corpse-strewn beach of Normandy, the foreign land of Korea and now Vietnam.” This signifies that he acknowledges that he is now a part of American culture as well, although he struggles to come to terms with it. Since he is now a part of American culture and society, he feels as if he has become muddied and impure.

“They overlooked that cleansing fountain of nature and brotherhood which is Joaquin.” This line really stood out to me. Here, Rodolfo blatantly states that Joaquin is Mexico’s history, culture, and people and that the people who disregard it went on to ruin who he is.

“I shed the tears of anguish as I see my children disappear behind the shroud of mediocrity, never to look back to remember me.” Here, Rodolfo is describing how his culture is deteriorating due to his people hiding themselves and becoming okay with being normal instead of being amazing, therefore changing who he is as well. But Joaquin quickly turns around and becomes prideful and unrelenting.

“I am still here! I have endured in the rugged mountains of our country I have survived the toils and slavery of the fields. I have existed in the barrios of the city in the suburbs of bigotry in the mines of social snobbery in the prisons of dejection in the muck of exploitation and in the fierce heat of racial hatred.” Here, Rodolfo is stating that Mexican culture and history will never be forgotten because it has been through so much and has occurred throughout most of North America. He ends the poem on a victorious note with “I SHALL ENDURE! I WILL ENDURE!” signifying the cultures enduring pride.

There were many lines in this poem that really stood out to me and will stay with me for a long time. Which line is your favorite?

Poem Reviews

When I was reading the "Theme For English B" poem I was thinking to myself 'this seems super familiar'. But at about the sixth line down, I realized that I had read and analyzed this poem in a highschool writing class. I absolutely love this poem! There's just something about it, the pacing I think, that I just love so much.