Hey You Get Off My Cloud, You Don't Know Me and You Don't Know My Style

 

Carlos Hernandez

English 104a

Final Essay

Susana Huerta

12/09/2009

 

 

Hey You Get Off My Cloud, You Don't Know Me and You Don't Know My Style

 

My identity is like a puzzle, every experience I've lived, every person who has influenced me, every place I've visited, they are all pieces that fit perfectly to create who I am today as a person, as a student. The experiences I've been through have brought me here, to college, to pursue an education. "If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere." Frank A Clark

St. Anger around My Neck

"He was crazy, insane, hating the Mexican flesh he had on his bones" Villaseñor. Just like Juan Salvador felt hatred towards his own people, I too have had the same feeling of hating my own people, but instead of hating the whole Mexican race my hate was focused on men.
At the age of three my heart was full of hatred. Being raised by a victim of domestic violence and being surrounded by strong yet vulnerable women I was confused. I remember not having a strong father figure until I was seven. Before that all I've seen around me were women being mistreated by their abusive husbands or single mothers struggling to feed their bastards. Some of them had become single by misfortune, their husbands had either being killed or died in an accident, and others had been abandoned by them. I wish that would had happened to us, but my mother wasn't as "lucky" as the other women, my "father" always came back home drunk, drugged and for some reason mad at my mother for wanting to give her kids a better future, for going out job hunting or doing someone else's laundry in order to pay the rent. He would beat her up until she lay on the dirt almost unconscious. I hated him for touching my mother but I also hated the men who lived around us, the neighbors, my uncle and my grandfather because they never did anything to stop him. Like Sanders wrote on his essay "The Men We Carry in Our Minds" that the first men he saw when he was a kid determined his destiny to be one of them, I too came to think the same, but after an event different paths opened for us, different opportunities, different destinies. After being exposed to the violence twice or three times a week I began hating myself, I hated being a man. I though that one day it was going to be me beating up my wife, wasting money at the cantinas. Thoughts of suicide came to my head, even though I was pretty young I was well aware of different methods to commit suicide which were taught by TV. I did not want to grow up into a monster. The only man I recall who respected women was my uncle "memo", he was my "father's" youngest brother. He was a soldier so we rarely saw him. He came home one day and saw my mom all beaten up and told her to runaway and so my mother called her mother and a couple of hours later we left never to come back, I was five years old. When I turned seven I met the man I now call DAD, unconsciously he taught me that not all men are turned to monsters as they grew old, he has so much respect for women, thanks to him all my hatred came to an end, we shared the same background, an alcoholic father and a strong woman as his mother who struggled all her life to give her kids a better future. Now that I'm older I've come up with a theory of why the man who impregnated my mother with my brothers and me had so little respect for women. His mother died when he was twelve years old and his dad abused him physically so he filled himself with hatred, accumulated throughout his childhood and took it out in someone "weaker" than him. All of this reminds me of how much respect Lupe and Salvador had for their mothers, the heads of their families.

Sexo, pudor y no lagrimas

"Tony ven vamos a jugar", she said as I walked out of my room, "our mothers have gone to the market and they left me in charge of you" she was no older than thirteen at the time. I followed her to my grandfather's house which was empty for he had gone to work that morning. "Take off your shirt and pants" she said "why? What are we going to do?" I asked, "We are going to play a game" she replied. At the age of four learning a new game seemed exciting, so I did as told and she took me to my grandfather's bed. And there I was, laying on the bed almost entirely naked, she started undressing, she took off the skirt she was wearing and then her shirt, I had never seen her, my cousin, like this. "This game is quite simple actually, all you have to do is imitate me and I'll do the rest" she said, "Ok, but what are playing?" I asked, "Al Papa y a la Mama" she answered. She sat on me and I remember her face was filled with joy and mischief, her face got close to mine, I felt her warm lips touch mine and she kissed me like the couples on movies do. She took off my underwear and…. I can't really remember what happened after that, what I do remember is me playing in my grandfather's living room and finding the Yellow Submarine Album by The Beatles and then my mother and my aunt walked in and I went rushing towards my mom, I was going to tell her about this new weird game my cousin had taught me but my cousin pulled me before I could even say a word and whispered to my ear "Do not tell anybody, this is just between you and me" and again I did as told. I don't remember playing that game with my cousin anymore after that day, after I moved to another town and started kindergarten I learned that that game was actually called sex, so I asked my mother what sex was and she explained me what it was. "Lupe really wondered about this world of sex."-Villaseñor.
I wanted to know what the point of the game was so when I finally learned to read every time I had the chance I would go to the library and read books about sex and biology, but at that age I couldn't understand most of what I was reading. Later in life I learned that people misjudge others by knowing too much or too little about a subject. In my experience, I was called a pervert for knowing a little bit more about sex than the rest of my friends both male and female.

El Extranjero

"Doña Manza and her family decided to to go out, too, but a few days earlier so they wouldn't be a big group and could get out of the mountains without being noticed"- Villaseñor. "Carlos wake up, its time" my mother told me as she got up and got ready to leave, "hide this money in your shoes" she said, I took the money and slipped it between insole of my shoe and my sock. It was still dark outside and I could smell the tension in the air. "He wants us to pay him now" said one the coyotes that was going to smuggle my mother, my brothers, a man and me across the border to the United States. "Te damos una television ahorita y alrato vienes por el dinero" said the owner of the house we were staying at, "esta bien alrato vuelvo" said the taxi driver. The coyotes gave each one of us two gallons of water "para el camino", we got on the taxi and he took us outside of town where all you could see was the desert, mountains and more desert. We had been walking for less than five minutes when out of nowhere three armed men robbed us. "Donde esta el dinero?" the most nervous one of them asked, "We don't have any" my mom answered without hesitation, "Vamos a darle en su madre a quien tenga el dinero", after hearing this I was scared. "Everyone, take off your shoes" another man said, and he inspected each one of them, I was second to last on the line and I guess he thought he wasn't going to find anything because he didn't even took half the time inspecting mine that he had taken with the others. Since they couldn't find anything they eventually let us go, and so our journey began. We walked and ran for seven hours straight, taking five to ten minute breaks every 40 minutes. We were all tired, especially my mom and her legs started to get numb, she just couldn't go on any further, her body was failing her. My oldest brother put her arm around his shoulder and I took her other one, at this point the smugglers decided that we needed to rest so we sat down under a tree and rested our bodies for thirty minutes, we walked for another 20 minutes and waited a little bit longer until the cars arrived for us, "cuando se metan a la ven(van) todos se van a acostar en el piso y no vayan a alsarse, ahi viene, vamonos corranle". Lupe and Salvador both experienced having to move out of the place they knew as home and move to another place way different from the one they had been raised, different people, different language and different cultures, laws and values. We had to take this journey to an unknown land in order to have a better education, a better future.

Y ahora estoy aqui…..

"Si usted supiera lo que es estar dividia no saber cual es su tierra…caminante por eso no tengo bandera representante, da lo mismo mi nombre lo importante es lo que hago, valorar al hombre por la calidad de su trabajo…los paises donde he vivido han unido sus matizes para que me caracterizen"-Makiza
All those events, people and places have made me who I am,
I am an immigrant who hated his gender, believes in feminism and who was exposed to sexuality at a very young age. All these pieces together make my identity and have made a huge impact in my life that I want to know more about them, I can't wait until I take an anthropology class and learn about the social beliefs of human kind, or take a psychology of human sexuality class and learn more, not just about sex but what's behind it.

Final Circle Blog

A Time of Miracle
This section starts off with one of the paymasters not wanting to pay Lupe and the rest of the women what they deserved for working in the fields, he used the excuse that it would be an insult for men. Tired of being treated like this Sophia called for a meeting between the workers, he told them than since they were going to live in the United States and going back to Mexico was just a dream they had to make their bosses treat them with respect, the men in the meeting disagreed with Sophia saying that they were going back to Mexico, but other women in the crowd backed up Sophia and so the men had to listen. After a week of seeing their workers not doing any work and not being able to find any other people to replace them, the bosses gave in and agreed to pay both men and women equally. After a some time, Maria’s first husband, Esabel, came back to her, she took him back but kept his other husband, Andres, many people including her family thought of her decision to be wrong. Lupe, Carlota and Victoriano decided that their parents should not be allowed to work anymore because they were old. Victoriano learned to drive and bought their first truck because after the strike, the labor contractors in town didn’t want much to do with Sophia and her family. Mark offered Lupe a job helping his uncle with his bookkeeping. After coming back from the library Lupe noticed that there was not one in at her house and remembering how her brother always told her that women were not supposed to drive she decided to go against what he had told her and teach herself to drive, while Salvador saw her doing this, he realized that his “angel” had some evil in her and this made him love her more. After the mess she made Lupe and Salvador talked and both shared their dreams and their life experience, Lupe was stunned and excited for no one had ever asked her about her dreams. Since Victoriano and his father didn’t a job for sometime, they worked with Salvador moving manure until he (Salvador) told them that he had other business he had to take care of and so they work alone. After working five days with Epitacio, making the liquor, they had to hide it but on their way there they got “robbed” by Ten Mexican cowboys and Archie. Doña Margarita had the idea of going to Chicago to find her lost son, a day before she was supposed to leave, her son Domingo showed up with a woman named Nelly. During this time Lupe became very ill and was unable to go to work for a couple of days. Once Lupe was healthy again Salvador showed up to where she was working and gave her the keys to his car so she could practice her driving skills. That same night Lupe and Salvador kissed for the first time. Harry took Salvador to a store which was owned by his brother to buy a wedding ring for Lupe. Lupe decided to tell Mark that she was in love with another man and he promised her that he was going to fight for her. Domingo brought Salvador many problems because he was stubborn, he didn’t not listed to him after he had told him not no make a big fuzz while they were in the distillery so the neighbors wouldn’t call the cops. Salvador and Domingo were beaten up by the feds and sent to jail, Salvador lost all of his money and saw that none of his so called friends let him borrow money and the last people he would have thought were going to help him out did. Salvador was able to get back on his feet and proposed to Lupe with the help of Father Ryan. Lupe and her family accepted Salvador’s proposal, she told him that he wanted the first years of their marriage to live alone just the two of them. Lupe met Salvador’s mother, Doña Margarita for the first time. A couple of days before the wedding Febronio and two of his son came to Salvador’s house to congratulate him and they brought him a goat, he killed the goat and told them go away. Doña Margarita who saw the whole thing through a window talked to Salvador and told him that he needed to let go of all the hate he had inside of him because it would give him problems throughout his marriage. Salvador apologized to Febronio. On their way to the wedding, Salvador got pulled over by a couple of Indians, they told him that he was under arrest all because he didn’t invite Archie at the wedding. Since he didn’t have another option he told Archie that he was welcome to join them to the celebration. Lupe and Salvador got married, they had the reception at Lupe’s Parents home and everyone was enjoyed themselves.

The Men We Carry in Our Mind "Thinking about the text"

1.Sanders acknowledges that the bodies of the men he knew were worn out, they were twisted and maimed by the hard labor they went thru everyday. “The nails of their hands were black and split, the hands tattooed with scars. Some had lost fingers” “Their ankles and knees ached from years of standing on concrete” p. 56

2.For Sanders, the soldiers were the ones who did not sweat and whose chief fact of life was boredom, the ones who didn’t have a say when or how a battle would be waged, but when the hour killing arrived, they would kill.

3.After living among poor men, who were bound to work as their fathers had worked, killing themselves or preparing to kill others, he couldn’t image growing up to be one of the other type of men, those who were bosses, the savvy lawyers or the generals because that was his boyhood vision of men destinies.

4.Sander’s father’s fate seemed a partial escape from the fate of most men he knew because even though his father went from working on a red dirt farm to a tire company, and from the assembly line to the front office this didn’t mean that everyone would have the same opportunities as his father did and so they were bound to follow the path their fathers had lay for them.

5.According to Sanders, women had “the better life” because they didn’t have to break their backs or had to go to war like the men he knew from his childhood.
6.Since both lower class men and women share the fact of being poor, both of them struggle, men have to break their backs just to get some money while women have to break their heads rationing the money.

7.Sanders wanted to share the power and glory of the fathers of the college educated women just as much as they did, they both wanted jobs worthy of their abilities, for the right to live at peace, unmolested.

Summary Self-Evaluation Blog

The most challenging parts of writing this summary were finding the main ideas in the essay, writing the thesis statement and writing the actual summary. I found these areas to be hard for me because even though I’m a good reader and I can understand for the most part the ideas, in other readings, the author is trying to give us, I had quite some trouble understanding the ideas Tan was trying to her readers. I believe this was because I had never broken down an essay into sections and had to find the main idea in each section. Writing the thesis and the summary itself were also complicated because of my “broken and/or limited English”. I couldn’t find the words to express what I had in mind so I used “simple” words and terms to overcome these challenges to be able to write the summary. Having to follow a certain set of rules made this summary difficult for me so I’m going to have to say that aside from reading the essay everything else was in some ways hard. Honestly, I don’t understand how I got and A- on it, I was actually hoping for a C or a D. For the next summary I’m going to take more time analyzing the reading and thinking about the ideas given by the author and seek help when and/or if I find myself puzzled with the material.

Memorization

The most important memorization technique I learned from chapter 8 would have to be connect because if I can relate to something I already know it’s easier to memorize the new subject or idea that I’m being taught. I also found mark it down and act to be very useful because as kinesthetic learner its easier for me to learn the new subject by writing it down rather than coming up with acronyms which will confuse me later when trying to remember. I think that it depends on the person and/or situation on which technique is more efficient to use. For example, if I want to remember a number or email and I don’t have a pen, paper or something to write the information in I cant act the number, for this scenario I think it would be easier to just try to break the number/email into sections which will make it easier to remember until I can write it down. Each one of us memorizes things differently, so all I can say is to practice on the memorization technique that best suits you.

Libby Blog Response

1.Do the author’s survey results indicate that feminism is, by and large, a dirty word for her fellow students? What in the essay makes you agree or disagree?

By the author’s results I believe that feminism is not a “dirty” word among her fellow students, you can see this in paragraph two where she says “in-fact only one person said that feminism was a bunch of radical women who hate everything about men and blame them for everything bad in the world.” She also stated that most of the people said that feminism was a good thing.

2.What reasons does Libby offer why there are not more self identified feminists?

Many males she talked to said that they couldn’t be feminist because they were male and feminism was only for women, some said that even though they agreed with the ideas of feminism they couldn’t call themselves feminists because they weren’t actively doing anything about it. Also some people said that sexism, sex exploitation and oppression don’t exist in our society anymore. Another reason is the negative connotation attached to the word. Others said that they didn’t care about the issue and one person responded that “titles freak her/him out”.


3.Why does she think more people should identify themselves as feminist?

She thinks that more people should identify themselves as feminist because both men and women are victims of sexism and sex exploitation.

Transfer Motivational Conference

I enjoyed everything about the conference except the workshop. The bus, it was mad funny when Jorge started giving out sandwiches “Tuna or Ham?” I think that the first couple of speakers were alright but then they kept talking and talking and honestly I lost interest in what they were saying. Roll Call, that was the point where I snapped out of my daydreams and got my mind back into the conference. I was really excited to go to the workshop, mine was at the library and I fell in love with it, 5 stories high damn. The workshop speaker was one of the downers from the conference, first of we couldn’t relate to her since she wasn’t an AB540 student, even though she had some points she really didn’t tell us anything new, I was hoping to get some more information about AB540 but nope nothing new. She kept talking about how she thought she wasn’t going to get into Berkeley and how her teacher pushed to her to apply to Harvard and how she did get in, I think that was the highlight of her presentation, having someone push you when you think you can’t and achieving things you would never have thought of. The campus tour was alright, it had been a long day and we were all tired so we all wanted to get it over with. Overall it was a cool experience, seeing new faces, getting closer to the ones you already know. Another downer about the conference was that we couldn’t perform at “Explosion” and we couldn’t even stay to see the other performers.