Tuesday, 21 February: Mexican Americans: Immigrant / American Dream story, or Minority?

·        Fiction-nonfiction dialogue: Rosa Ortiz

Fiction:  Candelaria’s “El Patron”  Nonfiction: Soto’s “Like Mexicans”

Fiction-nonfiction dialogue: Rosa Ortiz

Breaking it Down: I had a hard time distinguishing these two essays as fiction and non-fiction. I guess it is because I can relate to both stories on a personal level.

“El Patron” is told in the first person, which right away makes me want to believe it is a true story. Yet, this story does not seem to be as detailed as Soto’s piece. There is also a reference to Pancho Villa in the story, a reference that many Mexican American families can completely relate to. We all seem to have that one person in the family who fought along with Pancho Villa. The one thing that stands out for me in “El Patron” is that back and forth dialogue between the characters. Plus, there is a lack of details in the story. This entire story is in a span of a couple of days. Lastly, this story ends with what seems to be a happy ending.  Dad and son come home together with a resolution or so it seems.

“Like Mexicans,” on the other hand, does not contain as much dialogue. It seems to be more of a narrative from a person looking back and telling a lesson he learned to his children or grandchildren. There is a lot more details and descriptions in Soto’s essay. For example, the description of the “kitten clinging to the screen door…” The time frame for this piece is in a span of years, unlike “El Patron.” The narrator jumps from describing discussions on girls he had with his best friend when they were young to describing the woman he married years later. The ending to this story may seem to be a happy one, but in a way its more of the moral to this story.   

Questions:  Do you think either of these stories are in the gender-bending category? And why or why not?

What about the other two stories we read, where would they fit in?