I’m starting to see some similarities will every book we’ve read so far and it is definitely helping me get some sort of grasp as to what kind of hardships the Chicano communities go through.  I would enjoy this book a little more if it weren’t pessimistic towards men and did not shape us as harsh and typically a villainous sex. But, the same critique goes for women as well.  At least I got this from the first half of the book.  This was encompassed perfectly in one quotation.

“All I know is I was sleeping with your father the night you were born.  In the same bed where you were conceived.  I was sleeping with your father and didn’t give a damn about that woman, your mother.  If she was a brown woman like me, I might’ve had a harder time living with myself, but since she’s not, I don’t care” (Cisneros,76).

I thought this was a very powerful quote, the kind of quote where when you’re reading and just think to yourself “o snap!” The whole chapter never marry a Mexican was a lead up to certain stereotypes.  Since this man was married to a white woman, and according to the speakers logic, that she was not in some way equal to Chicanos.  This quote frames the man as not having any sort of control while it depicts the woman as a deviant she-wolf, who has no remorse for her actions.  I don’t enjoy how this book cages men under the guise of weak-willed individuals.  Having said that it makes the book a page turner.

Another quote from the same chapter that I thought was very interesting is on 71.  “I’m amphibious.  I’m a person who doesn’t belong in any social class.  The rich like to have me around because they envy my creativity; they know they can’t buy that.  The poor didn’t mind if I live in their neighborhood because they know I’m poor like they are, even if my education and the way I dress keeps us world apart…not to the middle class from which my sister Ximena and I fled” (Cisneros, 71).

This quote stuck to me when I was reading.  I really connected with this character and his social entrapment.  This was an interesting take on immigrants who live in el otro lado.  So far our readings have dealt with social assent and poverty, but this man doesn’t have a class to stick to and to me doesn’t seem to fazed by it.  I am looking forward to finishing this book and putting the jig-saw pieces together.