A Small Place - Antigua Identity

A Small Place is a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid, a writer from Antigua. The novel was published in 1988 and the work is an indictment of the Antiguan government, the tourist industry and Antigua's British colonial legacy. The novel starts off with the author describing what a tourist would see on their way from the airport to the hotel. It describes the streets, houses, government structure, rich people's houses and the beach site from a hotel room.

The novel starts to become a bit aggressive towards the tourist or the community of tourists in general. It begins to address the tourist as a distasteful and hated person by every Antigua inhabitant. It explains this is due to the fact that the tourist is able to escape the misery they might be living in the place they come from because they have money and the means of doing so. However, Antiguans are not able to do this because they along with most people from other country are poor and live under a government that do not allow them to get out of the country easily. For this reason they are jealous of tourists and mock them behind their backs by criticizing the way tourists express themselves and how ridiculous they look when they try to blend in with people from the island by eating with their hands. While this behavior should not be supported can you really blame them? 

You see, the author expresses how the Antigua from then differs from the Antigua of now due to the colonization of the British. The island along with its people lost their identity as a country and as individuals. Their pride and culture was hurt. She indicates England people missed their country so much they turned everywhere they went to into England and turned to British every person they met. When a country takes over another country alot of the regional culture is lost because there is a mix of two cultures where one is being imposed over the other for the comfort of the colonist. Languages are also affected by colonization. What better example than Puerto Rico being colonized by the United States? While we still speak Spanish most of the time, English has now become very common and much more than a second language. Our culture has also being affected, according to my grandmother and few ancestors. Some people go as far as saying we no longer have an identity as a country. I differ from the last remark but that is for another blog.

Down On The Island - The Bilingual People

Down on the Island is a novel written by Jim Cooper about the academic behavior of puertorican students in Mayaguez in the 1950s. During the 1950’s a young professor went to visit and teach English class in the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. To his surprise he encountered the problem that students barely knew English language and in consequence the students would cheat on exams and homework. Even worse, the students would do this in front of him and with no shame at all. The students did not see this behavior as dishonest and unethical. It seemed it was an academical behavior supported and accepted in the school system of the island.

It is surprising the number of Americans who still believe puertoricans do not speak English. Indeed some older people never managed to even learn a healthy Spanish language, due to the late development of schools throughout the island in the before the 1950s. However this is not entirely true today. Many puertoricans, especially the younger population, are bilingual. Even the few that “do not know” English do in fact know but have never been able to practice it or have trouble in either writing or speaking but rarely is both.

I learned my English in middle school. It was the time I hit puberty and would listen to rock music all day long to brink of driving my mother crazy. My friends and I had one particular hobby which was watching music videos and American TV. We also enjoyed going to the movies and would challenge one another to not read the Spanish subtitles. This is the way many of the young bilingual population learned their English, and really good English. Combining the American media influences with the English courses we are required to take every year since kindergarten through college, we have been able to learn proper English and become a bilingual island.

Being a bilingual island has opened many doors for us as a country and as individuals. It makes tourists feel more comfortable because they can travel to the island without the constant worry of how they will communicate. It makes us more appealing to jobs and participation on entities because we able to communicate with a wider population than those who speak a single language. Moreover, we are easily able to learn a third language. Because both, English and Spanish is everywhere, it comes naturally to us without the need to study harder for it giving us a sense of two mastered languages. This in turn allow us to start learning a third language and making the process even easier. For example, English and French are alike languages, just like Spanish and Italian are also alike, still you will find Spanish words in the French and words similar to English on Italian. This is because Italian, Spanish and French are romance languages and English is derived from them. So, not only it is easier for us to learn a third language but it also broadens the spectrum of languages we are able to learn at a faster rate.

I wish Jim Cooper would visit the island at a present time. He would see that our English has improved and spread across the island, along with the unaccepted no-copy academic behavior.  

A Room With A View - Marriage Is Not Freedom

 Women in the past did not have the choice to choose who they were to marry. Since they were young their parents chose who they were to marry and many times these men were a lot older than the women. Some of these women would learn to love their husband with time but many never did. They were seen as fit wives to procreate and maintain the household in order but not to have freedom, choice and vote. The also had no right for education and expressing their feelings openly. The role of the men was to provide for the wife and children but they had freedom to go out with their friends and be around and about with no one to question them.

In the movie “A Room With A View” Lucy Honeychurch was setup for marriage which she willingly and blindly accepted because it seemed a good choice since he was a wealthy man. She was in love with another man. She was in love with the man that stole her first kiss and saved her from an accident in Italy. Lucy’s family did not approve of George Emerson because he was not a man of money and did not seem to be aware of the upper class manners of the Victorian times. Despite this, Lucy was able to overcome her fear and broke her engagement with Cecil Vyse. She ran back to the arms of her new neighbor…Guess who? Yes, George. He had moved back to England with his father Mr. Emerson and to the same village Lucy lived in. This was of course after being convinced by Mr. Emerson and Mr. Beebe that what matters is what she felt in heart and not what people approved or disapproved of. After a hot sex session with her truly beloved one they both realized they were where they wanted to be regardless what anybody thought. Like many English men in the Edwardian era, George died at what seems to be World War I, which started in the 1914, leaving behind a broken hearted Lucy.

The movie takes place in the transition from the Victorian Era to the Edwardian Era, an era characterized by peace and economic prosperity. Not until the late 20th century did women obtain the right to omit the promise of wedding vows. Marriage for women was a lifetime commitment. Very rarely were women allowed to have a divorce and even until 1891 if a woman attempted to escape from an unhappy marriage, she could be captured and punished by the law. This is to say that Lucy’s actions were indeed risky ones and she was lucky to have ended her engagement before getting married. Once she had been married, there was no going back.

Many women in the 21^st century have not yet realized how broad their opportunity to triumph in life is, because of the degree of freedom we now have and the rights to assume and develop our own identity through education, commitment and vote. While this is mostly true for women in America and most Europe and Asia, there are still countries that are underdeveloped and lack the opportunity America and Europe can give to women. There are also few religions where women do not have the right to education, choose who to marry and even what to wear. These are the women we have to fight for.

How powerful do you think the world would be if women kept away from education by economics and religious means were given the opportunity to study and work?

Comment down below! J

                                                                                     A Room With A View Trailer!

IDENTITY

IDENTITY is a lecture written by Peter Roberts. It establishes the way people identify themselves through, culture, nationality and language. In the lecture it is discussed what is home to different people. Some call home the place where their family and loved ones reside. Others call home the place they were born in and some people call home the place where their first language is spoken.

To me home is the place where my family is. I have lived alone in San Juan for the past five years while studying in the UPRRP and I have never been able to call it home even when I like it there. This is because no matter how many friends and distractions I have in San Juan when I'm alone my mind drifts off to my family in Arecibo. Surely some would say that feeling does not go away even when you move on, get marry and make your own family. I agree with them. One of the reasons I am trying to become a professional it's so that I can get a good job while staying close to my family and loved ones.

Strangely sometimes people call home or identify to people who speak their same language. When we travel to other countries that speak a different language and we hear someone talking in Spanish or English they almost immediately make us feel safer and they become our friends. Last year I went to an internship in New Mexico. I thought I was the only puertorican there until one day when I was waiting in a bus stop and a couple of interns that seemed to be older than me started speaking Spanish but with a particular accent. Puertorican accent. I remember at that moment my mom called me and they heard me talking with her. When I hung up on her they introduced themselves and said it was nice to meet another puertorican there. From that moment on the three of us became good friends.

My father used to be in the US NAVY. I told him about this reading and what he thought about it. He said, more than the language, was the nationality. He never suffered racism from other militants but he said that militants from the same country did get along better. They became almost instantly identified with one another. "Being away from home the next best thing you have close to home is a person from the same country and culture", he said.  

Identity is part of all human beings. 
We do it by nature and by need, whether it's by a language, a religion or a nationality. Identity creates new bonds with new people and break bonds with others, sometime for the better, sometimes for no good reason at all.