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Latinx Literature, Borderlands, Dreaming in Cuba, We the Animals, Post…

- - - - My mother says that Abuela Celia's had plenty of chances to leave Cuba but that she's stubborn and got her head turned around by El Líder. Mom says "Communist" the way some people say "cancer," low and fierce. ... "They're dangerous subversives, red to the bone!" Mom's views are strictly black-and-white. It's how she survives.
    - - "In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano, Mexican, Latino, Indiginous inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our sangre is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny."
    - - Liberation of Puerto Ricans, Self-determination for all Latinos, liberation for all third world people, Revolutionary Nationalists opposing racism, equality for women and down with Machismo, community control of institutions, education of afro-indio culture and Spanish, opposing capitalists
  - - - "The border fence that divides the Mexican people was born on February 2, 1948 [...] It left 100,000 Mexican citizens on this side of the land, annexed by conquests along with the land."
  - - - Dreaming in Cuban - The revolution and diaspora
      - Yo Soy Joaquín - This poem uses important Mexican historical figures to write about the Latinx experience in the US.
        
        "I am the masses of my people and
        I refuse to be absorbed.
        I am Joaquín."
      - Yo soy Joaquín
    - - Ghost Sickness
- - - - Drug Use
        
        Down these Mean streets- Piri and others, including other Latinx characters, deal with drug addiction throughout the novel.
      - Alcoholism
        
        Fatherhood and alcoholism- We the Animals- The father's alcoholism
- - - - Down These Mean Streets-“Pops, I wondered, how come me and you is always on the outs? Is it something we don’t know nothing about? I wonder if it’s something I done, or something I am. Why do I feel so left outta things with you—like Moms is both of you to me.”
      - We the Animals- "Paps disappeared for a while, and Ma stopped showing up for work, stopped eating, stopped cooking for us, stopped flushing cigarette butts down the toilet, and let them pile up instead"
      - House on Mango Street- "No wonder everybody gave up. Just stopped looking out when little Efren chipped his buck tooth on a parking meter and didn’t even stop Refugia from getting her head stuck between two slats in the back gate and nobody looked up not once the day Angel Vargas learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut, just like a falling star, and exploded down to earth without even an “Oh.”
    - - Down These Mean Streets- "How come when we all get hit for doing something wrong, I feel it the hardest? Maybe 'cause I'm the biggest, huh? Or maybe it's 'cause I'm the darkest in this family. Pops you ain't like Herby's father, are you?.I mean, you love us all the same right"
    - - We the Animals-“Loving big boys is different from loving little boys—you’ve got to meet tough with tough. It makes me tired sometimes, that’s all, and you, I don’t want you to leave me. I’m not ready.”Then Ma leaned in and whispered more in my ear, told me more, about why she needed me six. She whispered it all to me, her need so big, no softness anywhere, only Paps and boys turning into Paps.
      - Dreaming in Cuban- “Papi, I don't know what to do anymore." Lourdes begins to cry. "No matter what I do, Pilar hates me."
        "Pilar doesn't hate you, hija. She just hasn't learned to love you yet.”
  - - - House on Mango Streets- "Until the way Sally tells it, he just went crazy, he just forgot he was her father between the buckle and the belt. You’re not my daughter. You’re not my daughter. And then he broke into his hands."
      - We the Animals-"...we knew that there was something more, someplace our Paps was taking us with all this. We knew, because he was meticulous, because he was precise, because he took his time. He was awakening us; he was leading us somewhere beyond burning and ripping, and you couldn’t get there in a hurry."
      - Down These Mean Streets-"Even before the first burning slap of his belt awakened tears of pain, I was still trying to get words out that would make everything alright again. The second whap of the belt brought words of pain to my lips, and my blind running retreat was a mixture of tears and "I hate you""
  - - - Sugar Babies-"I looked at her sad face, and, for a split second, I imagined Miranda as a real infant, a baby who breathed and cried..."I don't know if I'm very nice to you," I whispered.
    - - We the Animals-
        
        “Ma, you’re crazy,” Joel said. “Everyone’s sleeping, and it’s not even his birthday.She studied the clock for a good while, shook her head quickly back and forth, and then focused on Joel; she bored deep in his eyes as if she was looking past his eyeballs, into the lower part of his brain. Her mascara was all smudged and her hair was stiff and thick, curling black around her face and matted down in the back. She looked like a raccoon caught digging in the trash: surprised, dangerous." I hate my life," she said”
    - - Eight Bites- "I was tired of flat, unforgiving dressing room lights; I was tired of looking into the mirror and grabbing the things that I hated and lifting them, clawing deep, and then letting them drop and everything aching"
- - - - "Great hands is what she calls mine. The rain will eventually come, or not. Until then, we touch our bodies like wound- the war never ended and somehow begin again."
  - - - "And I don’t know if he will understand about Jessica. That there is no desire there. It’s not so much mechanical, but I love the fact that I can kiss her in front of so many people. The flaunting of it. And when I let her kiss me, I think of Nene, and I wish that she were him. That he could sit across from me, spin bottles and that we could kiss in front of people. "
- - - - Down These Mean Streets- moving into a neighborhood
        
        "Hey, you," he said. "What nationality are ya?" I looked at him and wondered which nationality to pick.
      - The House on Mango Street- the narrator's house being a temporary place
  - - - Summer of Nene - hanging out, performing heterosexuality
    - - Dreaming in Cuban - daughters becoming mothers and creating a very different environment, children identifying more with different parents and family members
      - We the Animals - the differences in how the narrator is treated by his family vs how his brothers are treated
    - - Down these mean streets - not snitching
  - - - Eight Bites - Comparing her eating habits and weight to her sisters
      - We the animals - the only brother who can't swim
    - - We the Animals - only queer sibling
      - Eight bites - only one not having got the surgery
      - Down these Mean Streets - darkest complexion out of siblings
        
        "I’m one of ‘you-all.’ Am I your brother or ain’t I?”
        “Yeah, you’re my brother, and James an’ Sis, and we all come out of Momma an’ Poppa- but we ain’t Negroes. We’re Puerto Ricans, an’ we’re white.”
        
        “But mentally I measured it against my brothers’, whose noses were sharp, straight, and placed neat-like in the middle of their paddy fair faces. Why did this have to happen to me? Why couldn’t I be born like them?”