18 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2023
    1. "Hey," it says, "I've got something good here. You'll like it. You can trust me. Give me a whirl."

      I've loved reading since I was little. Reading is what helped me learn English after immigrating. Ever since then, there's some sort of peace and comfort that I find in the words on the paper that I don't find anywhere else.

    2. he is even homelier than they remember,just as she is even more intensely the love of their life and their jailer.

      Yet another paradox, how can someone you love be your jailer? but somehow it sounds like a regular parent/child relationship; complex and possibly conflicting but full of unconditional love.

    3. If we think the Apollo Belvedere is beautiful, what do we say about the naked bottom and legs of a manemerging from a strawberry and scurrying around Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights?

      This brings up the idea that if we think of something as beautiful, does that mean its opposite is not? Is beauty as simple as black and white? or is as complex as the human experience? personally, I prefer the latter.

    4. what am I saying, exactly?

      Maybe we're so used to using hyperboles so much, that at times we don't notice we're doing it. But at that specific moment we either believe our words or mean them with our whole being.

    5. That is all it has to do.

      I agree with this statement to a certain point. Art is a means to express human emotions but they're not always beautiful. Not every emotion is all sunshine and rainbows and not everything that comes out of every emotion is beautiful.

    6. That's beautiful when the Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic invited the gallery audience to cut her with razor blades-or shoot her?

      I read about her performance a while ago, and this performance will forever be the only justification I need to not trust men. Ever. As much as I want to be strong, it terrifies me to live in a world where men can be so vile.

    1. Because I left of my own accord me dicen, “¿Cómo te gusta la mala vida?”

      I can still hear my mom and mis tias saying this to me. No, I don't like to suffer but I want to live MY life to my own accord. Why is that so bad? I'll take the advice, but that doesn't mean I'm going to follow it blindly especially if it has led me to unhappiness before.

    2. There is a rebel in me—the Shadow-Beast. It is a part of me that refuses to take orders from outside authorities. It refuses to take orders from my conscious will, it threatens the sovereignty of my rulership. It is that part of me that hates constraints of any kind, even those self-imposed. At the least hint of limitations on my time or space by others, it kicks out with both feet. Bolts.

      I heard of a study that concluded trauma is passed through DNA. I wonder if this is a trauma response. Why do we hate taking orders? or maybe it's the way they are given that we hate, not the order itself.

    3. Me entra una rabia cuando alguien—sea mi mamá, la Iglesia, la cultura de los anglos—me dice haz esto, haz eso sin considerar mis deseos. Repele. Hable pa’ ’tras. Fuí muy hocicona. Era indiferente a muchos valores de mi cultura. No me deje de los hombres. No fuí buena ni obediente.

      Oh my gosh! do I relate to this so bad. Raise your hand if you're a Mexican woman that was raised to be good and obedient 🙋‍♀️ Now I am a grown up, and my mom gets mad at me because I am too scared to speak up for myself... the irony.<br /> Why did our parents think it was disrespectful when we questioned them? Why would they force us to do things against our will? I just realized it's a trauma response to the way the Spanish converted America.

    1. Some of us were craftsmen in the old world,good with our hands and proud of our work.Others were good with their heads.They used common sense like scholarsuse glasses and books to reach the world.But most of us didn’t finish high school.

      The last sentence is heartbreaking because it's true. Up until middle school my teachers said i was so smart. I even skipped 2 grades. But i grew up in a village where to this day, there is only an elementary and a middle school, each with only 2 teachers. For reference, I was born in the 90s. Once they finish middle school, the family has the choice to send their kid to the city for high school, but most of them don't because it's expensive.

      Although I'm thankful to my parents for sacrificing so much, I can't help but feel like I would've been happier in Mexico.

    2. all the crazy liesthat say that we are savage;

      Why do they create these stereotypes? why are only minorities savages? what about the race that enslaved millions of people? Or the one that killed and erased a whole culture to steal their gold? The one that caused the trail of tears? But they love to make excuses for their ancestors, "Well they didn't own slaves!" Maybe, but they turned a blind eye to it all, and I feel like that's worse.

    3. for she was Soledad Guerra,        solitude and war,and she used to always smilecon ternura morena

      The fact that her personality was the opposite of the meaning of her name, feels like sunshine on a cold day.

  2. Oct 2023
    1. sure cure for frightened Mexican boys

      For us it was a bolillo(the Mexicans French bread) or sugar. Mexican moms are so wise, they have a natural cure for almost everything.

    2. cops n’ robbers

      The name's that kids gave to their games back then were insane. Why was this such a fun game to play though? in Mexico tag was called* la roña * which was a name for chicken pox

    3. Neighborhood of my youth        demolished, erased forever from        the universe.

      I can't imagine not being able to go back to the place i grew up in. My childhood home is a part of me, it holds so many memories of people that are no longer alive. i would be devastated if someone destroyed it. Although it's different than it used to be, I love telling my daughter stories of my childhood there.

    4. Kids barefoot/snotty-nosed        playing marbles/munching on bean tacos

      This was literally my childhood growing up in Mexico. Although we lived in poverty, these were the happiest days of my life.

    1. I sentenced him        who was me.I excommunicated him, my blood.I drove him from the pulpit to leada bloody revolution for him and me. . . .                I killed him.

      I was confused in this part. who was he? the Spanish?

    2. caught up in the whirl of a        gringo society,confused by the rules,scorned by attitudes,suppressed by manipulation,and destroyed by modern society.

      This made me think of all of the immigrants, especially my parents. I never really paid attention to their struggles of making a life in a foreign land. To me, they always made it look easy.