Comparing "...And the Earth DId Not Devour Him" and "Aria".

In both of these works, the families of the main characters take different approaches to dealing with being Mexican in a gringo society. In Earth the family clings on to their Mexican roots, language and close neighbors in the town they live in. In Aria, the family assimilates into the gringo society by learning to speak English. It is important to note that they live in very different social atmospheres. The family in Earth is located in a place where there are a lot of other Mexican-Americans that also work out in the field with them. In Aria, the family lives in an all white neighborhood and is almost completely cut off from communicating with others in the community. This, alone, is a difference between the two works that could explain the differences in the ways that the families dealt with their situations. Instead of asking why they took these routes, I want to juxtapose the way these choices affected the roles of the mothers of each respective family.

In the novella ...The Earth Did Not Devour Him, the section entitled "The Night Before Christmas" tells the story of the mother going to buy presents for her children who has not partaken in the gringo society and has, more or less, been a shut in. What essentially happens is that she has a panic attack when she goes into the toy store and has to walk out without bringing home any presents for her children. There are many factors that could cause something like this but this case was most likely due to culture shock. After spending so much time in the comfort of her simple, Spanish-speaking home, she ventures out into the English speaking part of the town she lives in where the atmosphere, the people and the store presentation freaks her out so much, her body goes into a state of panic. One of the last things said in this section is the husband to the wife telling her "Just stay here inside the house and don't leave the yard. There's no need for it anyway. I'll bring you everything you need"(134). Her alienation from he gringo society is not a bad thing but it has led to her being stuck in her house and taking on a role of subservience and naïveté .

In Aria, the mother of the family takes on a completely different role after the family starts to adopt English. The husband did not speak as much as his wife did so it caused her to be better than him at it. Which, in turn, led her to be the number one public communicator for the family. In other words, she wears the pants when they're out in public. She even said the prayers at the dinner table because she could speak better and "even on formal occasions, when there were guests in the house" (24). She isn't a completely free feminist that opts out of shaving her legs but she does have more freedom than the mother in ...The Earth Did Not Devour Him simply because she can communicate and interact with the gringos.

Would a Mexican-American woman learning English who has previously been isolated because of the gringo language barrier automatically shed gender roles if she were to learn English? Would it matter if her husband was as fluent as she was?