Page 174 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

Now he is a true convert. “Yo soy Trumpista,” Faife boatlift, in which he and more than one hundred
4
said, noting that he thought Trump should thousand other Cubans were allowed to leave
“declare martial law.” the island. But the Cuban government repeat-
A short walk from Elián’s old home, in the 30 edly denied her an exit visa, as it did nearly every
DIFFERENTIATION small parking lot outside the Va Cuba travel average citizen who applied for one. She didn’t
Identity
Collaborative Learning agency, I found a group of senior citizens who see her son for twenty years, until she finally got
were more ambivalent. They recounted a Cuban an exit visa in 2000.
Tobar devotes a portion of the essay to a melodrama of need, bitterness, and family sepa- “Todo lo que he sufrido,” she said. All that
discussion of the pros and cons of Castro’s ration. “Cuba has suffered sixty years of poverty, I’ve suffered.
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
Cuba, which could seem like a digression. tragedy, disaster, shortages,” one woman told I thought of the story I’d just heard from
You might ask students, in groups, to have me. “Where Communism takes root, not even Gustavo, who was also separated from his family
a brief discussion about its relevance to weeds grow.” The woman, her husband, and her for twenty years. “To be latinoamericano is to
Tobar’s overall argument. How do para- sister-in-law were all in their seventies, graying suffer,” I say.
graphs 30–35 help to develop his thesis? and dressed in the frumpy casual wear of the “Seguro,” she said. Without a doubt. 35
struggling South Florida middle class. They were
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
planning a visit to their family in Cuba, and the SPANISH HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY
woman was afraid the government would retali- 57% HISPANIC
ate if their names appeared in print. She hated BIDEN 88%, TRUMP 10%
the dictatorship. And yet. . . “If it hadn’t been for
9
Fidel Castro, my children in Cuba wouldn’t . . . [“L]atino” remains a big-city appellation with
have studied,” she said. All five of her kids were a West Coast slant; in New York barrios, you’ll
raised and educated under the Castro regime; hear “Hispanic” just as often. When I crossed
three now lived in the United States, two in the George Washington Bridge and entered
Cuba. “They did one good thing: they gave the Manhattan, I found Spanish Harlem covered in
people education. They taught the people to snow. El Barrio is home now to a Latin American
read and write.” Her children and grandchildren community composed of people with roots in
all became doctors and dentists — but those who the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala,
remained in Cuba now rely on American rela- and many other countries; for some, Latino best
tives’ remittances to get by. captures this ever- increasing diversity. Tony
“Capitalism is hard,” the woman’s Rivera, a fair-skinned Puerto Rican, told me that
sister-in-law said. “You have to work, and sweat, he has come to embrace the term to describe
and earn what you eat. . . . But wherever they himself and his neighbors. The importance of
take freedom from you, no system works.” In this pan-ethnic solidarity increased during the
Cuba, she had been employed by a university Obama and Trump eras. For Rivera, “the fact
and had seen bright people cowed into silence. that Trump was so blatantly disrespectful to
“Every time someone raises a voice, they cut Puerto Rico and some other countries of color
his head off. They put him in prison and disap- became personal for us. Obama was personal for
pear him. They say he’s a ‘terrorist,’ a ‘delin- us, because he was one of us.” Obama was a man
quent,’ they shame him.” Her son avoided a of color with mixed-race heritage making his
prison sentence by fleeing during the Mariel way in a white-dominated world, and his story
resonated in El Barrio. “We have brothers and
uncles that look just like him. We run the gamut
with color. Whether you’re blanco, or caramelo,
9 Fidel Castro was the leader of the Communist regime in Cuba from
1959 until his death in 2016. — Eds. or prieto.” White, brown, or black.
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DIFFERENTIATION
Connections to Text
®
AP Teaching Tip. The Spanish Harlem sec-
tion is another section that connects directly
to the 2022 Sotomayor rhetorical analysis
prompt (also referenced in a note on p. 271).
Sotomayor speaks about her experience
growing up in a Puerto Rican family in New
York City, and students could compare her
experiences to the ones Tobar recounts in his
visit to Spanish Harlem. To what extent do
the New Yorkers agree on their attitude
toward their Latinx identity?

280 chapter 4 / Identity

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