As a Language major, the number of English literature classes I can take is limited and I already took them all last year! I am glad that this course did not fall under the same category. I enjoyed being in this class!

Who Would Have Thought It? almost scared me away but I ended up writing about it for Wikipedia and reading a lot of the critiques gave me a sense of appreciation of Ruiz de Burton’s work. Sometimes, when I edit the article on Wikipedia, I feel somewhat of an anonymity that I think Ruiz de Burton initially wanted. Maria Ruiz de Burton would use Mrs. Henry S. Burton in the publication of her books and we use different names to sign into Wikipedia.

As I was writing on the book’s portrayal of religion and how it was used to distinguish Lola from the Irish Catholics, I realized that Alvarez too finds the need to distinguish the girls from the Irish population. Although this course is about Chicana identity, reading the novels gave me a sense of an overall immigrant experience.

There seems to be a lot of motivation for immigration as well such as the constant renegotiation of the demarcation of borders in Who Would Have Thought It? the harvest in … y no se lo trago la tierra, political motivations in El Puente de Brooklyn, marriage in Woman Hollering Creek and Pinochet’s dictatorship in and a Body to Remember With

I think it was such a treat to have Carmen Rodriguez come and talk about and a Body to remember with and share her insights on why a writer chooses to write a work of fiction instead of an autobiography.