Like Mexicans

In the text “Like Mexicans”, the author uses a unique way to compare and contrast different cultures, and the ones that he should and should not marry into. In the first paragraph he starts off with a flashback from his past, and talking to his grandmother about who he should and should not marry. The author goes into great detail with his childhood memories of what his mother and grandmother told him what he should do, and then skips to his present. In paragraph six, he says “But the woman I married was not Mexican but Japanese”; the author goes into what he has done, and how he felt about it when it first happened. Usually in a comparison and contrast essay the author will explain one thing, and then the next paragraph explain the other. This author jumps from past to present within sentences not paragraphs. By telling a story almost the author keeps his audience intrigued in the writing and wanting to know more about who he ended up choosing to marry. An interesting way the author portrays his contrasts on different social classes, is when he says, “ The wallpaper was bubbled from rain that had come in from a bad roof. Dust. Dust lay on lampshades and windowsills. These people are just like Mexicans, I thought. Poor people.” He compared the Mexicans to Japanese, because the family’s house was not kept up with, it was dusty and dirty and falling to pieces. This is an interesting way to write a comparison and contrast essay because there are no specific comparisons in the paper. Instead of direct comparisons he uses it more subtlety, yet interesting. In the last paragraph the author concludes his paper by having flashbacks and reminiscing what he saw the day he went to go meet his fiancés parents. Instead of tying the two together or separating them, he goes back and forth. “Like Mexicans, I thought. I remembered the Molinas and how the cats clung to their screens- cats they shot down with squirt guns.” In this quote he is going back in time remembering a time