Andrea Roman's We Are Not

“Patricia deja de comer comida en la calle, para eso cocino.” These are words that I constantly hear from my mother whenever I eat outside of the house. My mother is a strict Dominican mother who believes that food from the streets will make me sick or gain weight in an unhealthy way. In the story We’re Not by Andrea Roman, author mentions that her parents could not understand certain unacceptable actions in their culture were acceptable to practice in the United States. My mother is a person who I believe does not understand that neither. Most of our latino parents want to follow and continue to contribute to their culture traditions and beliefs. Sometimes they just make it hard for us to understand, just like the author of the book does not
Her family is from Bolivia, but my family is from the Dominican Republic. I believe this does not make our families very different from each other because we share many similar things, especially the same language which is spanish. In the third paragraph Roman mother's says “We’re not American, Andrea. Why do you want a sleepover?” (227). This is a question both of us have received from our mothers. Roman answered the question by saying “Because all my friends are sleeping over and it’s going to be fun and her parents said we could all spend the night” (227). I think Roman answered the question, but not well enough to convince her mother. In this case I’ll answer my mother by telling her that we no longer live in the Dominican Republic, and try to negotiate with her. In the past, I tried to negotiate with my mother by making actions, like cleaning the house. Once, she told me that she would let me sleep over my friends if the house was clean before she gets home from work. When she arrived home, she announced that I was not allowed to sleep over anybody’s house. Roman and I went through the same situation, because felt bad and I couldn’t understand why would my mother mak negotiations and not comply with her part? Yeah, I couldn’t understand
Today, I can say the same about my mother rules. My mother rules helped me to become more aware of the things I do and love my culture even more. Don’t get me wrong, I am very proud to be Dominican and thankful for the mom that I have. Nowadays in my generation, teenage girls lied to their parents about sleeping over their friends house, but in reality they are not even with the friends that they are suppose to be with. Although, Andrea and I couldn’t fully understand the reason why our mothers would not let us do certain things with our friends, but have learned that all they wanted to do was to protect us and keep us away from the negative things. As a grow up, I learn from my mother’s strict rules and apply them to my life as much as I can. Her strict rules have helped me to become the mature young lady that I am