Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

My first draft completely lacks a concise argument. I really want to discuss who exactly Gloria’s audience is, due to the incorporation of Spanish and other Chicano references. The other really interesting part of this essay for me is the role of Gloria’s personal identity throughout the novel. She expresses such a strong tie between her language and herself, that I feel it inappropriate to not go deeper into this observation. The final task I need to accomplish is to tie it into one of the eight methods. In the first draft I began to use the reflective method by stating that before I read this article, I was unaware of what a Chicano was and what their culture consisted of. Even though the essay was written in Spanish and appears to be reaching out to other Chicano people, I made the inference that her main goal is to teach all people. Especially ones like me, whom are unaware of the culture all together. In order to incorporate all of these aspects of the essay into one, I am going to try to begin with the claim that Gloria wants to teach. Then, using my personal naivety and maybe even a personal experience, try and recognize that her audience does in fact consist of people of oppressed languages, but also those who are part of the majority in the United States. She says in her essay that she tried teaching poems and stories in school in the Chicano language. She did this because she is trying to make sure her language does not disappear. I can then describe her identity through language, because if she does not teach, and her language becomes even more oppressed, she herself could fade away.