Use Of Narration In Judith Ortiz Cofer's I Like Guys

Story telling about a person’s life can be a good way to illustrate a point, a technique which has been used throughout human history. Authors such as Judith Ortiz Cofer, in her essay The myth of the Latin woman: I just met a girl named Maria, and David Sedaris in his essay I Like Guys,use narrative to argue their thesis, however this is not limited only to established authors. With the pair of essays written by Cofer and Sedaris (and a little story of my own) a reader can see how the use of narration describing events in an author’s life can be used to argue a point.
In her essay, Cofer wanted to use moments in her life to show readers how Latino women in particular are often thought of in terms of a Latino stereotype. Right at the start Cofer
With a sense of urgency, yet an unsettling and calm tone, she told me “we are under attack! We are under attack!” and urged me to come to the living room, where my father was watching the news feed of the first tower in flames. Shortly after, we watched as the second plane smashed into the other tower, and after witnessing my parent’s reactions I began to feel fear about what this event meant for us. My parents reassured me that there was no impending danger for us and reminded me that I needed to get ready for middle school (which was 8th grade for me). So after going through the normal routine in an otherwise abnormal day I got ready and went to school. When I got to my classroom the teacher already had the TV tuned to the news. The better part of the school day was spent watching the news in a classroom near empty from most of the parents keeping their kids at home. I asked my teacher why we needed to watch the news so much of the time, to which she replied “This is history in the making and you all need to bear witness to it.” This single major event changed my own perception of the world in the sense that a part of my “innocence” was stripped away. That there were people out in the world that wanted to destroy so many