My parents came to the U.S in search of a better life; in search of the American dream, which is a better life, money and more opportunities. Who knew it would be so hard to get all of those things. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side…
Me, Myself, and I
“Her Anglicized pronunciation wouldn’t be unusual in a place like California’s Central Valley. I didn’t have a Mexican name either: I was an instruction guide.” Manuel Munoz (P. 35)
My name is Griselda Janeth Mercado Estrada, not Greaselda, nor Grizelda, Griselda. All my life my name has been pronounced in a different way, not the way it was intended. Teachers have trouble pronouncing my name, they either try and pronounce it wrong, or just say “I can’t pronounce this name” I’m used to hearing that so much that I know it’s me they are referring to when they say that. My family and I lived in a small house in East Palo Alto for the beginning of my life, living there, was hard in that my parents would have to work pretty much all day to sustain that house. My brother and I wouldn’t see them often, they’d be too busy with work.
Complications
“What happens when students have been praised for their intelligence or their effort and then they encounter difficulty? ... Those who are praised for intelligence lose their confidence and motivation, their performance plummets, and they are ashamed of their difficulty.” Carol S. Dweck (p. 17)
Towards the end of my 7th grade in school my family and I picked up our belongings and moved to Newark. With that move many changes happened, we went from living in a house we rented to one that we could call ours. Another big change was that in my new school I learned that I had to work hard to earn good grades, in my previous school I would get good grades without trying, in this one I hit rock bottom, but I managed to get up and get the kinds of grades I was accustomed to. I used to think that I wasn’t smart, because I wouldn’t understand what was being taught to me, but I pulled myself together and I was determined to get the grades I was used to, and I did. The only thing that was static was that my parents still had to work most of the day maybe even more, because the mortgage was a lot, way more than what they could afford, we bought the house with a loan at the time when banks encouraged people to buy houses. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep the house and my dad had to declare bankruptcy, we packed up our things again and moved to a house nearby.
A new life
When I was 15, something amazing happened, my baby brother was born. Both of my parents had to work so I was in charge of him in the afternoons. It was awesome. I enjoyed taking care of my brother, I watched him grow and change in all those months and years. It made me realize just how valuable life is, and how fast things can change. One minute I am only responsible for my homework and school the next minute I am responsible for those things plus a little person, and in a few months that little person isn’t as little as he was before. Even though, I had a younger brother it was up to me to take care of the baby. I remember taking him to the park and people looking at me with pity thinking to themselves, “this poor girl so young and already with a child.” That made me mad, because they assumed that I was his mother, because they probably wouldn’t have assumed that if I were another race. I want to prove to others that that stereotype isn’t true and that people shouldn’t make assumptions without knowing others.
A better Future
“I am trying to save our lives.” Sherman Alexie (p. 6)
My parents came in search of the American dream and 19 years later they haven’t even had a glimpse of it. They work all day they don’t have much time to spend with my brothers and I. I want to be able to wake them up from this nightmare and let them live that dream, I want them to have more time for themselves. I believe that the only people actually living the American dream are those who have an education, they don’t have to work the blue collar jobs, they get to do what they want and still have time to be there for their families. We are content as to how things are today I don’t want to be only content I want to be happy with what I do, and I want to make it so my parents won’t have to work as much as they do now.
Griselda,
ReplyDeleteYour essay is interesting because I feel like it is actually a critique of the "myth" of the American Dream. In telling your personal story, you're able to highlight the ways in which people struggle to achieve the impossible in an increasingly challenging and economically depressed world.
But the challenge you have is to show how those things that are external to you have actually shaped who you are and informed your desire to go to college. You do hint at this, but you need to go a bit deeper in making that connection. Use the external to tell the story of the internal-- not the other way around.
Overall you have a great start-- strong organization and relevant quotes help move your ideas along logically. But a lack of specifics and development prevents you from being 100% clear about who you are- what you want and have learned because of those things external to you.
Here are some questions to consider for revision:
1) What is the significance of the story of the mispronunciation of your name? In your self-evaluation you explain that Manuel Munoz's humanity is compromised when his name is mispronounced over and over. I like this idea. Are you trying to say that this is how you felt as well? And if you did, so what? In what way did your feeling this way impact your perspective on who you are in relation to an English-speaking, Anglo world?
2) Consider that this section (Me, Myself, and I) has two ideas that are somewhat disconnected. You start off by discussing your struggle to be respected (in the form of your name), and you end on the story of living in East Palo Alto with parents who worked hard to survive. So what's the connection between these two ideas? Is there a way you can elaborate on each so that you might have to separate your paragraphs and delve deeper into each aspect of your story?
3) Your section on the birth of your little brother is strong in that it demonstrates just how you matured and how your desire to have an educated life was impacted by taking care of him. But that same focus and explanation is lacking in the section, Complications. Again, you have two distinct ideas in this section: the struggle you faced moving into a school that challenged you, and the struggle of watching your parents lose the home they invested in. Again- what is the relationship between these ideas? How can you elaborate on the impact that each of these experiences made without losing focus?