Latin American Contributions to American Culture: Debunking Stereotypes - Essay Sample

Introduction

The Latin ethnic group in America has had a great contribution to America through its various literal additions in the American culture. At the moment, it is very easy to note the depiction of Latin American immigrants in politics as a means towards a menacing mass involving Spanish-speaking invaders. What most people do not recognize is that the stereotypes suggesting Latin Americans be a great threat to the American culture are not only historically repugnant but also incorrect historically. The Spanish-Language, for instance, predates the writing in English of Puritans by almost a decade. As this project will try to look into, many renowned Latin Americans and writers have actually produced their best works of literature while in the United States. The Latina and the Latino writers together have contributed exceptionally to American Literary history.

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Community service refers to a free attempt or volunteering to the community in order to benefit the community in one way or another. America has benefited more from volunteerism than any other country, and it is an opportunity to strengthen relations between the different ethnic groups in American houses, a chance to bond, and to come together as Americans and take care of their own. It has resulted in the rise of the many different organizations from the health sectors, schools, and environment to social groups offering their labor and services as a contribution to the community.

José Martí (Cuba, 1853-1895)

Jose’ Marti for most Cubans is equal to George Washington, or Ralph Waldo Emerson or Walt Whitman all combined. Marti was born in 1853 in Havana, Cuba. He creatively wrote much of his 28 volumes of poetry, prose, and speeches most in the 19thy century while in New York. Being a diplomat, a Spanish teacher, and also as a journalist, he interpreted various current issues and the questions right from the office on the front street in Manhattan street Seaport. Marti witnessed immigration by the boatload to New York City except for those who were banned like the Chinese in 1882 (Anguiano, Brown-Johnson, Rosas, Pechmann, and Prochaska, 2017).

He was aware of the lynching of the black Americans and the various atrocities that were against the Native Americans. These and other stories found their way into Marti’s thinking of Latin Americans and the Diaspora in America. Marti also documented New York, which became his adopted city, comparing the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge as “colossal boa constrictors” resting on the towers. Right after the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, Marti confirmed to the fact that Cuba his distant home was a colony of the Spanish; “For those who have you, O liberty, not know you. The one deprived of someone has must not only talk about but ought to win you” Marti fought for Cuban independence and later after his death was introduced to the New York State Writers Hall of Fame together with other local luminaries like Colson Whitehead and Hamilton Alexander.

Julia de Burgos (Puerto Rico, 1914-1953)

Burgos was the greatest Puerto Rico’s poet who migrated from Caribbean Island, a place where she was placed as a teacher. Her literal journey in one of her greatest pieces, “Yo misma fui mi ruta” Her form of inventive, daring poetry paved the way for most feminists and Latina and those that came later in the early 20th century. Against the intense pressure of identified as white, De Burgos claimed her own African Heritage, by calling herself Black. In one of her poems in 1938, she addressed the evident distant between the liberated identity as a writer and her constricted duty as a woman. She wrote that “You in yourself does not have to say; your family, husband,” she notes in “To Julia de Burgos” “Only my heart govern in me, only my thought; it is only me who governs in me.” Sadly she was found dead with no identification in Manhattan and was buried anonymously on Hart Island in Manhattan. The New York Times successfully featured her as a poet who greatly helped shape the identity of Puerto Rico’s identity in her overlooked obituary series about women in May.

Gloria Anzaldúa (Texas, 1942 - 2004)

She is well known to be a poet and an essayist who came from a family of Mexican Americans who was laborers. Her work often was celebrated in the context of community bilingualism. She creatively portrayed this as a survival action against the various “linguistic terror acts” of the public schools of the United States, which only needed English to be taught. She offered ‘accent elimination” lesions in some parts of the United States, which use to be Mexico. She mostly found such insults to be excruciating, and all she wanted and pushed for was to take pride in her own language in the United States. She was highly recognized as one most defining influential feminist in the 20th century and an anti-racist essayist (Loera, Rued and Oh, 2018).

Sandra Cisneros (Chicago, 1954-present)

When discussing the literal contributions of Latinos in America, one Sandra Cisneros can never be missed because she had holds the center stage in the contributions of Latin as a community in America. She is author of the famous and loved “The house on Mango Street,” which sold close to 6 million copies and has been equally translated to more than 2o different languages. The most favorite of her novels is the “Caramelo,” she creatively made great contributions literally in the American society as she narrates her hidden truths relating to family tensions, and crossing of the border.

The Angels Group Project

The groups comprise a not specific number of volunteers as it recruits anyone interested to lend a helping hand for the benefit and prosperity of the society. Some of these community services are; In schools, we have selected a few schools to give free Latino lessons as a method to promote and encourage diversity in American society. This group does not focus on American-Latino citizens, but whoever interested, they can feel free to join in the lessons (Chang, 2019). The lessons are mostly offered on Friday evenings, weekends, and sometimes incorporated in the school system and taught as a subject. Despite it being a small organization, it also puts efforts to make small donations such as storybooks and writing materials.

The group also has a team that volunteers to work in elderly homes. This is a program that was started due to the high percentage of the elderly in the Latino community, but now it has expanded to lend that helping hand to different elderly homes. It as well trains the volunteers to be good caregivers and give support, love, and affection (Chen, Chow, and Nguyen, 2018).

The group also helps in the shelters. Due to the increased number of immigrants and the increased poverty levels, the shelters are often overwhelmed. Some are students who find their way here, with no place to call home, therefore making The Angels Group program step in to help the shelter people in the possible way they can, for example, holding fundraisers to generate at least enough money for donations such as beddings, food, clothes and sometimes footwear.

References

Anguiano, B., Brown-Johnson, C., Rosas, L. G., Pechmann, C., & Prochaska, J. J. (2017). Latino adults’ perspectives on treating tobacco use via social media. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 5(2), e12.

Chang, G. H. (2019). The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America's Fraught Relationship with the China Men. Amerasia Journal, 45(1), 86-102.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00447471.2019.1611344

Chen Jr, M. S., Chow, E. A., & Nguyen, T. T. (2018). The Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research, and Training (AANCART)'s contributions toward reducing Asian American cancer health disparities, 20002017. Cancer, 124, 1527-1534.https://scholar.google.com/scholar?output=instlink&q=info:7tTy3MDMcjIJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&scillfp=9597537302931929683&oi=lle

Loera, G., Rueda, R., & Oh, Y. J. (2018). Learning and motivational characteristics of urban Latino high school youth. Urban Education, 53(7), 875-898.

Saylor, T. (2019). Americans First: Chinese Americans and The Second World WarThe Adventures of Eddie Fung: Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of War.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1093/ohr/ohq021