12 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2022
  2. longreads.com longreads.com
    La Otra
    10
    1. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      I could hear Mami and Papi arguing in the kitchen. My mother slamming plates and silverware in the sink, asking over and over about la otra, a dirty fucking whore she could smell all over him, this woman who had taken the money she worked for, the money she brought home to take care of her children while my father was chillin’ with his homeboys in la plaza.

      Diaz family trauma is a reoccurring factor as her parents begin to have a heavy argument. She has to live with this most of the time with her siblings it seems. It is interesting to see how her dad is being accused of cheating on her mother after Diaz describes his interaction with the neighbor. Another big factor is the description of his having the need to escape from his relationship.

    2. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      At first it felt like being interrogated, but after a while I was so happy to have a grown-up listening to me talk about myself

      Diaz demonstrates how she doesn't have an adult figure who she can express her opinions to unlike her neighbor. This can be hard as she already feels like she doesn't have the same interest other girls might have and especially those of her mother.

    3. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      He was always getting in trouble. Cano throwing down with the school bully to defend my tío, the quiet, Jesus-loving kid who refused to fight. Cano getting whooped with a belt by the assistant principal for smacking another kid upside the head. Cano, who’d spent a short time in the Army. Cano the prankster

      Diaz gives a description of her father who was more rebellious as opposed to her uncle. He is the problem child and eventually leads to him having to leave to the states.

    4. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      That bookcase was his refuge, where he sometimes went when Mami was yelling or flinging plates across the room.

      It seems like Diaz is trying to say that the relationship wasn't always the best between her mother and father. So much so that her father uses books to escape his problems. It also may lead to why he was smiling when talking to the neighbor. It could be refreshing to talk to someone different for a change.

    5. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      La vecina introduced herself, and Papi walked over, shook her hand over her balcony’s railing. They got to talking, ignoring me and Eggy, Papi smiling, the way he never smiled.

      Diaz mentions her dad smiling in a way he doesn't really do when he talks to the neighbor. She might be alluding that her father has a sort of bigger interest when talking to the neighbor then when he usually is around the house.

    6. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      La vecina, as we learned to call her, was nothing like Mami. She wore no makeup, a faded floral housedress, and out-of-style leather chancletas like my grandmother’s, her curly brown hair in a low ponytail. She had deep wrinkles around the corners of her eyes, although she didn’t look as old as Abuela.

      Diaz description of her new neighbor shows a different example of an older women who is almost the opposite of her mom. It can be an example that she doesn't have to be all dressed up like her mom which she already describes not to like.

    7. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      Years later, would I think of Zula during that first kiss, that first throbbing between my legs?

      Diaz shows a little about her exploration at this age towards her sexuality.

    8. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      You should love your body, my mother taught me. A woman’s body was beautiful, no matter how big, how small, how old, how pregnant. This my mother firmly believed, and she would tell me over and over.

      Her mother seems to be a strong influence in her life and gives her drops of wisdom for Diaz to keep.

    9. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      1985. These were the days of Menudo and “We Are the World,” the year boxer Macho Camacho gave a press conference in a leopard-skin loincloth as Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” blared from radios across the United States. In one month, the space shuttle Challenger would explode while all of America watched on television, entire classrooms full of kids, everyone eager to witness the first teacher ever launched into space.

      She gives us a description of the time period she is talking about using popular events that sort of describe what was happening at the time in the world.

    10. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      I knew that these were things meant for girls, and that I was supposed to like them. But I had no interest in my mother’s curtains, or her tubes of red lipstick, or her dresses, or the dolls Grandma Mercy and Titi Sandy sent from Miami.

      Diaz is demonstrating the difference between her mother and her. She shows how things that she says were "meant for girls" weren't really her thing. Her mother seems to push what she wants onto Diaz even though Diaz opposed it.

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    longreads.com/2018/06/25/la-otra/
  3. www.apa.org www.apa.org
    King's challenge to the nation's social scientists
    2
    1. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      Science should have been employed more fully to warn us that the Negro, after 350 years of handicaps, mired in an intricate network of contemporary barriers, could not be ushered into equality by tentative and superficial changes.

      This demonstrates Dr.King's belief that people should of known that the drastic change of being slaves for 350 years to "equality" wasn't so easy as it seemed. He believes that the only real changes were on the outside almost big picture things but true change never occurred. The change he might be talking about is one that is mental. That white people mentally realize that people of color are equal to them and that things were rushed to happen.

    2. JohanV21 09 Feb 2022
      White America is seeking to keep the walls of segregation substantially intact while the evolution of society and the Negro's desperation is causing them to crumble. The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come.

      Dr.King is trying to describe the sort of reaction in which the white people in society at this time were scrambling to stop from segregation ending. He uses the analogy of a wall of segregation that is being broken by the evolving society. This society he is referring to are the people who oppose segregation and who believe in equality. He also talks about the desperation of the African American community which helps crush this imaginary wall. This can be connected to the idea of the African American people who suffered for so long and are pushing hard in this movement of change. The white majority who is unwilling to accept change believes that because of the chaos created no real change will be made. Dr.King says the chaos originates from them which is probably referring to the various riots caused by police brutality during this time.

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    apa.org/monitor/features/king-challenge