De Colores Means All of Us

When I was younger I asked my mom if I was Mexican-American she said yes but when I asked her if I was a Chicana she said no. I didn’t understand at the time but to her it was something very important in her struggle for acceptance. In all reality there is still no set definition to what exactly a Chicano is other than a Mexican-American. To her it meant a struggle of being accepted by the United States Anglo-dominated society. Her definition is that to be a Chicano you had to be part of the Chicano movement of the 1960s. My mother is a strong advocate for the United Farm Workers and La Causa and she struggled during the 1960s and 1970s to help Mexican-Americans in the civil rights movement. The cultural aspects that contributed to the Chicano movement were the literature, arts and musical movements. Elizabeth Martinez like my mother is a product of that time. She guides the reader to a path of a revolutionary based compassion for equality and justice. For me the book was not just for women or minorities but also for all people in general. This book gives all people including the Anglo community a chance to walk in the shoes of a revolutionary struggle for justice. I am glad people of all socio-economic statures can read this book and find something even the slightest thing to relate to. I found an interesting article from 1991 that shows how underrepresented Latinos and Chicanos are on the Stanford University campus http://news.stanford.edu/pr/91/910429Arc1429.html

Nickel and Dimed

This book uncovers a part of life that has been masked by members of the upper-middle class and beyond. It is an eye opener to the struggles people, including college students, are having to deal with everyday and the way they cope. Although Ehrenreich was fortunate to have a safety net, the people she was trying to understand didn’t. It did bother me a little the way she gave herself allowances. I did find it a little offensive and exploitive because she always knew what she had to go back to. At times I felt like she was using the less fortunate situation for her own benefit. People rely on public transportation everyday, she made it seem like only poor people use public transportation as if it was so terrible. Though she does empathize with the people around her like her co-workers who can’t afford rent and live in hotels or trailers. Ehrenreich did an excellent job in showing that without basic shelter and standard of living everything else in their lives are effected and therefore can never move up the ladder, somewhat like a feudal system. Everything from time and cost of commute to sleep to lack of stove or refrigerator sometimes leads to starvation. I may not agree with how she went about this book but the story is great and it is a real eye opener to what working class America is really like. My first year transferring I decided to go to Arizona State University with no help financially. I worked full time, went to school full time all with no car in the Arizona summer. I got a huge dose of reality that semester and I didn’t want to live on the edge. I was constantly worrying about something whether it was rent, bills, food or out of state tuition. I decided to move back with my parents in California where I didn’t have to live as the working class citizen and just as a student. I found an article related to college students at the University of Washington that are using food banks because they just can’t afford to buy food with the near 5 percent increase in the price of groceries in the past year. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=5451082