Essay 5

Cristina Teresa-Guillermo

Professor Curtis-Cummins

English Composition

14 December 2017

Personal and Social Change

Many people go through a personal change due to society because they make them feel different and should change in order to “fit in”. This is what happened to Gloria Anzaldua when she was trying to find herself even when her own family had strict guidelines as well as Marjane Satrapi.

In Borderlands and in Mother Tongue, something that was similar between the two was language. Anzaldua talks about the barrier between how language is seen with chicanos adapting to their own type of spanish and how they created this and were also seen different. Amy Tan on the other hand has different types of ways she speaks depending on who she is talking to. Tan is similar to Anzaldua because they both have their own different language in which many people can connect to.

Anzaldua and Satrapi in their book talk about their own change and throughout their book you see how they have changed for themselves. Even though Anzaldua had some strict rules on how she had to be in her family, she still went out to figure out who she really was and stay true to herself and not for others. Satrapi also had to find herself was knew she was different and when she left her home country to a safer place, she was also doing different things and was finding out who she really was.

Having a personal change is not a bad thing to have to find yourself to find your true self and who you really are because of how society says you have to be or how others tell you you have to be.

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands: La Frontera. 3rd ed., Aunt Lute Books, 2007.

Satrapi, Marjane. “Skiing.” Persepolis, 2000, pp. 267–275.

Satrapi, Marjane. “The Vegetable.” Persepolis, 2000, pp. 189–197.

Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue.

Essay #5 Idea Draft

Outline

• borderland & mother tongue
• language
• borderland & percepolis
• finding themselves
• personal change
• mixed culture?
• finding herself
• social change
• adopting to a new type of language
• personal experience
• between two languages and cultures
• language
• political changes
• government

P.W. 11/30

How are you feeling about the end of the semester?

- I actually don't know how to feel about the end of the semester. All that comes to mind is that we are halfway through the year and if I survived this semester, I will be fine in the next semester. I am a bit glad the semester is going to end because of the holidays coming up!

P.W. 11/28

How was the entire process of Essay 4 (research + writing)? What connections can you make between the 'change' you researched in your essay and the 'change'you have discussed with your group in the context of your Book Club?

- The process for Essay 4 wasn't too hard since I kind of broke it into parts and working on them individually and was able to bring it together into the essay like researching the topics one by one for each article and how they can come together to support the different points I was trying to make. When we discussed a 'change' in our Book Club, we talked about how the author would actually want to change. For my research, a 'change' would also be like changing the issue of domestic violence by doing something about it to help reduce the violence in the United States.

P.W. 11/14

How did you write your introduction for your Problem-Solution draft? What did you make sure to include?

- I didn't have an introduction yet. I started to write a bit of my body paragraph. I did include my inquiry question at the beginning of my draft.

P.W. 11/9

What is more important, the "They Say" or the "I Say"?

- I think that they are both important but the "I Say" is more important when you are writing because it is your stance on something and it is what you think - your opinions/point of view.

P.W. 10/31

How did your article/book research go? What did you find?

- For my topic of domestic violence, my research went well. I found a lot of different articles that were related to leading to depression. There were also articles about shelter advocates, violence relating to pregnancy (before and after), people witnessing domestic violence and how that affected them, implications for help, mental health, and help-seeking.