The story “First muse” by Julia Alvarez tell us about he life in The Dominican Republic. She starts to read The Thousand and One Nights book under her bed. She saw her self reflected in the dark haired almond-eyed girl on the book cover. Alvarez identify with the bright ambitious girl stuck in a kingdom that didn’t think females were very important. Scheherazade gave Alvarez the courage to explore the power of storytelling. When Alvarez came to the United States it was very difficult for her especially
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history books teach us. In fact‚ it is not until you open books and read stories written by those who have experienced the undisclosed elements of America’s past do you begin to understand how we as a country have developed. Two such stories are Julia Alvarez’s Yo! And Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. But it takes more than a good storyline to bring the past to life. The storyteller must be able to convey the emotion
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and communities‚ offering young Latinas a chance to connect with their heritage. In Once Upon a Quinceañera‚ Julia Alvarez explores this celebration that brings a Latina girl into womanhood. She attends the quince of a young woman named "Monica" who lives in Queens‚ and witnesses the commotion‚ confusion‚ and potential for disaster that comes with planning this important event. Alvarez also weaves in interviews with other quince girls‚ her own memories of coming of age as an immigrant‚ and the history
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Comparison of Julia Alvarez’s “Queens‚1963” and Tato Laviera’s “AmeRican” Both Julia Alvarez and Tato Laviera come from countries and cultures that are looked down upon by many people. Though each of their poems portray dramatically different points of view. In Julia Alvarez’s poem the girl she describes (herself) seems suppressed‚ she does what she can to fit in even if it means not doing something that she otherwise might have done. In Tato Laviera’s poem he is very positive and hopeful‚
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Religion Shapes Culture and Identity After reading Julia Alvarez ’ In the Time of the Butterflies it is quite clear that religion has a drastic impact on culture and identity. Be it on the individual level as the impact of Catholicism on Patria ’s life‚ or on a national scale and its effects on the country of the Dominican Republic as a whole. During the 1950 ’s in the Dominican Republic the Roman Catholic Church was very much removed from politics. Until the dictator Trujillo came to power
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the mind into thinking something is wrong with how we look. Julia Alvarez is a native of Dominican Republic that has moved to the United States and writes about her life in New York. In one of her stories‚ “I want to Be Miss América”‚ she specifically expresses her struggles as a Latina foreigner and how she tries to fit in. The author describes her thoughts and manipulated actions in many ways and how she reflects it later on. In Julia Alvarez’s “I want to Be Miss América” the theme that one’s desire
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The Kiss In the story “The Kiss” by Julia Alvarez‚ we see a family with four daughters‚ a father and mother. The father‚ who is old-fashioned and strict‚ has his own ideas of what he wants from his daughters. The daughters except for Sofia‚ the youngest one‚ have always done what he has asked for. Sofia does not agree with her sisters and she does what she wants. She runs away with a man‚ a decision her father cannot forgive. Although Sofia tries to reconcile with her father with no luck‚ she lets
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Through the novel‚ In the Time of the Butterflies‚ Julia Alvarez took the tragic story of the Mirabal sisters and made it her own. She molded and developed the Mirabal sisters into relatable characters over the course of the novel as to make the deaths of Minerva‚ Maria Teresa‚ and Patria even more traumatic to the reader. Although Dede did not fight the regime with her sisters‚ she still suffered because of Trujillo. Even though Dede lived‚ she can still be considered a martyr because her life was
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a way in which we were setting ourselves free from that old world where‚ as girls‚ we didn’t have much say about what we could do with our lives” (Alvarez 63). Julia and her sisters believed that by speaking English instead of Spanish‚ they were proving their individuality and gaining freedom from the restraints that their culture held on them. As Julia and her sisters grow up in America‚ they slowly lose their Spanish and find that they struggle to fit in with their family. “More and more we chose
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In 1945‚ the two superpowers--the United States and the USSR--became enemies because their beliefs and objectives were completely at odds‚ this was known as the Cold War. An aspect of the Cold War was the race for nuclear superiority. As tension grew between the USSR and America‚ Americans were engulfed in great anxiety and fear towards the atomic bomb. During the atomic era and since then‚ the atomic bomb had predominantly been portrayed as the cause of great fear and anxiety. As fears intensed
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