Citizen Rex

After the robot protest is broken up and Sigi loses her hands, and ends up in the hospital, Bloggo has a four-pane monologue over panes of the hospital. In this monologue, Bloggo writes about how hospitals are the one of the loneliest places in the night which is given an image of an empty hall; almost a blank panel besides the lines drawn for the walls. The next panel is a shift in subject to a nurse or doctor that is walking down the clean hallway, presumably with squeaky shoes as Bloggo said in the previous pane. The doctor is the only sign of life in the otherwise bare hallway of a place that not even germs survive due to the "unnerving smell of alcohol"(84).

The doctor figure is wheeling a cart that has a limb sticking out of it, which is presumably prosthetic due to the technology presented in the book. The limb kind of foreshadows the next pane, which is also a shift in subject where Sigi is shown with her hands cut off. The pane of her in her bed only shows the bed and IV the doctors are running into Sigi. Again, this shows more emptiness in a hospital while it is taking place in a darker part of the story after the robot protest has been violently broken up.

The last pane on the page shows another shift in subject to Hazel, a robot injured in the protest, on the operating table. This pane shows a few doctors in the room as well as Bloggo's father looking on. It is not as barren as the rest of the hospital which is sort of ironic considering hospitals are supposed to save lives, yet the most life we see is in a place they're fixing a robot.


Considering "Rex" is the latin word for "King" and the character has a huge block in the middle of the city as his tomb, is the character Rex an allegory or at least a re-telling of an Aztec King or some other royal figure?

Why did Rex seem happy when he was about to die in the end?

Miss Clairol Questions

1. Who was the person that Arlene told Champ she first had sex with? Why would she lie to her daughter about with who her first time was with? How does the theme of sexuality fit into the greater Chicano movement?

2. What color does Arlene dye her hair for her date? Why does she dye her hair so often? Is this piece a good representation of the Post-Chicano experience, from Champ's perspective?

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?

Never Marry a Mexican

The passage I will be dissecting will be the following from the piece Never Marry A Mexican written by Sandra Cisneros.

I can tell from the way [the boy] looks at me, I have him in my power. Come, sparrow. I have the patience of eternity. Come to mamita. My stupid little bird. I don't move. I don't startle him. I let him nibble. All, all for you. Rub his belly. Stroke him. Before I snap my teeth.

This happens towards the end of the passage after the narrator has established that she had an affair with the "boy's" father as well as the "boy", who is actually a grown man with a child of his own. The recurring motif of calling the man a boy symbolically shows that the narrator has power over him after explicitly say that she has this power over him. It is an erotic power reinforced by the diction of letting the boy "nibble" at her as well as her actions of rubbing his belly and "stroking" him. This not only fits into the recurring theme of sexuality throughout the entire piece, but is the highpoint in it's expression.

Her assertion of power goes beyond what is purely sexual when she calls him "my stupid little bird" after calling him a sparrow as if to demean him. It's curious that the word sparrow was chosen to describe him before calling him stupid since sparrows, as with most birds, are intelligent creatures. Not to mention, the symbolic meaning of flight and its connotations with freedom almost make these thoughts ironic considering the power the narrator claims she has over this boy. This marks a sort of regression in her power over him, noting that it is not a complete power. This is also duly noted noted with the use of the word mamita, an endearing term which literally translates into "little mama". Although she has this sexual power over this boy, she also takes on this almost motherly role willing to wait "for eternity" as well as rubbing his belly.

This internalized monologue has a very sexual mood where implied sexuality and eroticism blend when taking into context the rest of the piece. But as it stands on it's own, there is a degree of ambiguity to it, highlighted by the motherly undertones it provides. Given this, both interpretations make a lot of sense considering that the narrator admittedly had an affair with the boy's father and particularly when the boy was being born in a hospital. Could it be that she has "motherly" feeling toward him as well as sexual attraction? Is there a sort of freedom to being in that position being able to explore different facets of her sexuality; both the caregiver and the taker/heartbreaker?

After all, the narrator ends this extraction with "Before I snap my teeth" which is makes this passage even more ambiguous considering that it carries obvious sexual connotations compared to a sort of innate animal characteristic of a mother fending off attackers to protect her young. The use of the word "boy" makes that character act as a foil to make that point even more prominent. It is very much like the mother bear protecting her cubs.

As for a connection with the greater meaning of the prose, it is difficult to really see a point that she was trying to explicitly make. There is nothing specifically about why you should not marry a Mexican but perhaps her anecdotes are supposed to serve as reasons not to when she tells of no Mexican man being able to satisfy her love. An interpretation that I am partial to is that she starts to embody a motherly role to fill that void of love that is impossible for a man to fill for her. By the end of the piece, it seemed to have started working as the narrator's tone moves away from something along the lines of bitter resentment to something more at peace with the nature of humanity.

Note: My question for discussion is the bolded paragraph above.

Soy Joaquin

I Am Joaquin is a free verse and extremely lyrical poem written in the late 1960’s by a man named Rodolfo Gonzales, who is regarded as a founder of the Chicano movement. The poem itself is a reflection of his identity as a Mexican-American, and a long one at that. Having a tone that changes around in a poem can be tricky to pull off but was done well a couple of times throughout the poem.

The speaker starts off by declaring himself and his cultural context by stating his name in the language he is most proud of, Spanish, and follows it with describing how his culture has been “suppressed, destroyed and scorned” by the Anglo society in which he was born into. Confusion comes up three times in the first five lines to outline this point further that there is a discrepancy between what his culture truly is and what modern society wants for him. Before switching gears to describe historical events in his culture and their effect, he states that he withdraws from this society to be with “[HIS] OWN PEOPLE”. The capital lettering both emphasizes the deep emotions caused by racism and a bloody history as well as the story of his people to come starting in the next line.

The longest part of this poem deals with the speaker telling the story of the bloody Mexican history starting in the early 16^th century up to the Mexican-American participation in the Vietnam War (which was the present when the poem was written). He begins many of these statements with “I am” or some version of “I have”, telling these stories from the first person, as to make them more emotive and passionate. Declaring his identity by saying that he is a Mayan prince, Cortes the despot, the Aztec Eagle, has ridden with Pancho Villa and has been a bloody revolution brings together imagery that embodies the speaker. Most of these lines become very short a couple of pages into the poem bringing a conciseness to the identity of the speaker. The diction throughout this section is graphically filled with images of revolutions, death, war, destruction, disease, blood, courage, faith, and the land. There are many references of important heroes and battles that really bring a depth and richness to the culture he is trying to bring through the page.

With the line “Here I stand”, the tone of the speaker shifts from an angst-filled telling of bloody history to a slightly hopeless view of his culture’s stance in the world as if he’s exhausted from all of the bloodshed in the past. Nevertheless, he still stays proud of his culture after telling all about its history in a lyrical fashion and moves onto more present issues for the Chicano culture. Describing himself as dirty, poor in money, rich in faith and a victim of the destruction of music and art in his culture, the speaker shows us where he stand in the modern world. Many of the lines start to become enjambed which makes it feel as if the speaker is out of breathe, further illustrating the tiredness he feels from earlier examinations of cultural history. The new challenges for Chicano culture are revealed when he says that “I am Joaquin/I must fight and win this struggle for my sons, and they must know from me who I am”. The new struggle is surviving in the Anglo society. The hopeless and tired tone is irradiated when he declares “I am still here!” and that he has survived bigotry, dejection and exploitation.

The speaker starts to close the poem with images of further revolution with tequila, trumpets and clamoring voices ready to keep the culture alive and well. He ends the piece with a triumphant “I SHALL ENDURE! I WILL ENDURE!”

This piece is a statement of cultural identity that uses the speaker’s cultural history to embody and the identity of the speaker. He identifies so much with his culture that he actually becomes the culture itself in the poem, a powerful technique. It is significant to the Chicano identity given that the author was one of the founders of the Chicano movement.

(696 words)