everything to date

well, here we are at the last blog!

overall, this has been an interesting class, and i’m not really sure where to start.
i guess the most important theme that we covered was that of identity.  i am planning on writing my paper on something along that line… so i guess i can use this as a way of getting the wheels turning.  we saw so many characters struggle with who they are, where they come from, and why they’re out-casted and how to overcome (or be overwhelmed by) their situations.  what still stands out for me a lot in the movie that we watched.  it really concreted, in my mind, what immigrants have to deal with – and especially mexican  immigrants who were displaced in their own land (the whole ‘the border crossed us’ case).  there we saw the struggles and hardships and racism and internal problems that all of these people faced.  of course, we saw this in a lot of the readings.  
the first book of the course, who would have thought it, i found to be less of a story about chicano/a struggle and more of a story about people (no, not feminism) in an unstable country all trying to do what they thought best.  all of the women and men out for themselves, instead of each other.  this is a contrast from and a body to remember with, where we see all of the characters working for each other – in underground movements, helping with border jumping (embassy gate jumping), support from abroad (not forgetting who they left behind).  
women hollering creek had a diversity to it that helped span a wide array of readers; there was something for everyone.  i enjoyed this book a lot.  it had such a unique style to it; this, obviously, had a huge impact on the themes and the audience.  in changing how she wrote (from story to story), cisneros keeps the reader guessing and keeps them captivated… it is like an additional character, because without it the book would not work – the themes would not be a strong, and nor would the characters that we ‘see’ (or recognize).
i like the format of short stories, especially for a class like this because it allows for students to see several points of view that, often, in a novel can get lost or confused in a lengthy plot.  by having a few longer short stories that are serious allows the author to get an important part of his/her message across, and then being able to break it up with a lighter story (with no defined characters, or with characters that you don’t have to remember…) allows for the reader to not get bogged down with an overload of depressing information.
finally, i really enjoyed hearing carmen rodriguez speak.  it really helped give a face to the story (much like the salt of the earth – …y no se lo traigo la tierra), and an emotional attachment.  i have read a lot of books by chilean authors, and a lot of books that are connected to the coup; but this is one of the few books that does not incorporate the element of magical realism into, and i thought (initially) that i wouldn’t enjoy it as much as a result; luckily this was not the case.  i think that the canadian element successfully replaced the magic with a ‘new world’ element.  the new world (if it can be called that) redistributes the values of the old world and this contrast helps create its own kind of magic; i guess the most important aspect is the mixing of old and new.