English III - Mr. Judd Latino Study Guide

Which story is this text? : "Excerpt from The Languages Lost: Six Days in April We've been in Cuba four days and Mom has done nothing but complain and chain-smoke her cigars late at night. She argues with Abuela's neighbors, picks fights with waiters,beratesthe man who sells ice cones on the beach. She asks everyone how much they earn, and no matter what they tell her, she says, "You can make ten times as much in Miami!" With her, money is the bottom line. Mom also tries to catch workers stealing so she can say, "See!That'stheir loyalty to the revolution!" The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution has started hassling Abuela about Mom, but Abuela tells them to be patient, that she'll only be here a week. I want to stay longer, but Mom refuses because she doesn't want to give Cuba any more hard currency, as if our contributions will make or break the economy. (Mom isapoplecticbecause she has to pay for a hotel room and three meals a day even though we're staying with relatives.) "Their pesos are worthless! They let us visit because they need us, not the other way around!" Why did they let my mother in here, anyway? Don't these Cubans do their homework? I keep thinking Mom is going to have a heart attack any minute. Abuela tells me it's been unusually hot for April. Mom is taking several showers a day, then rinsing her clothes in the sink and putting them on damp to cool herself off. Abuela doesn't get any hot water at her house. The ocean is warmer than what comes out of her pipes, but I'm getting used to cold showers. The food is another story, though, greasy as hell. If I stay much longer, I'll need to get a pair of those neon stretch pants all the Cuban women wear. I have to admit it's much tougher here than I expected, but at least everyone seems to have thebarenecessities. I wonder how different my life would have been if I'd stayed with my grandmother. I think about how I'm probably the only ex-punk on the island, how no one else has their ears pierced in three places. It's hard to imagine existing without Lou Reed. I ask Abuela if I can paint whatever I want in Cuba and she says yes, as long as I don't attack the state. Cuba is still developing, she tells me, and can't afford the luxury ofdissent.Then she quotes me something El Lider said in the early years, before they started arresting poets. "Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing." I wonder what El Lider would think of my paintings. Art, I'd tell him, is the ultimate revolution. Abuela gives me a box of letters she wrote to her onetime lover in Spain, but never sent. She shows me his photograph, too. It's very well preserved. He'd be good-looking by today's standards, well built with a full beard and kind eyes, almostprofessorial.He wore a crisp linen suit and a boater tilted slightly to the left. Abuela tells me she took the picture herself one Sunday on the Malecón. She also gives me a book of poems she's had since 1930, when she heard García Lorca read at the Principal de la Comedia Theater. Abuela knows each poem by heart, and recites them quite dramatically. I've started dreaming in Spanish, which has never happened before. I wake up feeling different, like something inside me is changing, something chemical and irreversible. There's a magic here working its way through my veins. There's something about the vegetation, too, that I respond to instinctively—the stunning bougainvillea, the flamboyants and jacarandas, the orchids growing from the trunks of the mysterious ceiba trees. And I love Havana, its noise and decay and painted ladyness. I could happily sit on one of those wrought-iron balconies for days, or keep my grandmother company on her porch, with its ringside view of the sea. I'm afraid to lose all this. To lose Abuela Celia again. But I know that sooner or later I'd have to return to New York. I know now it's where I belong—notinsteadof here, butmorethan here. How can I tell my grandmother this?"

Dreaming In Cuban

What caused an exodus of Cubans in the 1950's?

The Cuban Revolution

What did Marquez receive in 1982 for magical realism and imagination?

The Nobel Peace Prize for Literature

Which event do the following facts describe? : -Occurred in October 1937 -Orchestrated by Rafael Trujillo -Caused by Trujillo's response to the tensions of Haitians to get them out of the way -Its outcome was a Haitian genocide of thousands dead -Hispaniola became divided from this evil instance -Haitians held up this (hint for the name)

The Parsley Massacre

People are __________ in Living To Tell the Tall, whereas they are _______ in "Tuesday Siesta".

asleep, awake

Meaning and significance always hover over _________.

contrast

A theme is always --------- in the text

implicitly (implied)

Living to Tell the Tale and "Tuesday Siesta" both offer __________.

sympathy

Were Marquez's family along with himself, conservatives or liberals?

Liberals

Which story is below?: "The train emerged from the quivering tunnel of sandy rocks, began to cross the symmetrical, interminable banana plantations, and the air became humid and they couldn't feel the sea breeze any more. A stifling blast of smoke came in the car window. On the narrow road parallel to the railway there were oxcarts loaded with green bunches of bananas. Beyond the road, in uncultivated spaces set at odd intervals there were offices with electric fans, red‐brick buildings, and residences with chairs and little white tables on the terraces among dusty palm trees and rosebushes. It was eleven in the morning, and the heat had not yet begun. "You'd better close the window," the woman said. "Your hair will get full of soot." The girl tried to, but the shade wouldn't move because of the rust. They were the only passengers in the lone third‐class car. Since the smoke of the locomotive kept coming through the window, the girl left her seat and put down the only things they had with them: a plastic sack with some things to eat and a bouquet of flowers wrapped in newspaper. She sat on the opposite seat, away from the window, facing her mother. They were both in severe and poor mourning clothes. The girl was twelve years old, and it was the first time she'd ever been on a train. The woman seemed too old to be her mother, because of the blue veins on her eyelids and her small, soft, and shapeless body, in a dress cut like a cassock. She was riding with her spinal column braced firmly against the back of the seat, and held a peeling patent‐leather handbag in her lap with both hands. She bore the conscientious serenity of someone accustomed to poverty. By twelve the heat had begun. The train stopped for ten minutes to take on water at a station where there was no town. Outside, in the mysterious silence of the plantations, the shadows seemed clean. But the still air inside the car smelled like untanned leather. The train did not pick up speed. It stopped at two identical towns with wooden houses painted bright colors. The woman's head nodded and she sank into sleep. The girl took off her shoes. Then she went to the washroom to put the bouquet of flowers in some water. When she came back to her seat, her mother was waiting to eat. She gave her a piece of cheese, half a cornmeal pancake, and a cookie, and took an equal portion out of the plastic sack for herself. While they ate, the train crossed an iron bridge very slowly and passed a town just like the ones before, except that in this one there was a crowd in the plaza. A band was playing a lively tune under the oppressive sun. At the other side of town the plantations ended in a plain which was cracked from the drought. The woman stopped eating. "Put on your shoes," she said. The girl looked outside. She saw nothing but the deserted plain, where the train began to pick up speed again, but she put the last piece of cookie into the sack and quickly put on her shoes. The woman gave her a comb. "Comb your hair," she said. The train whistle began to blow while the girl was combing her hair. The woman dried the sweat from her neck and wiped the oil from her face with her fingers. When the girl stopped combing, the train was passing the outlying houses of a town larger but sadder than the earlier ones. "If you feel like doing anything, do it now," said the woman. "Later, don't take a drink anywhere even if you're dying of thirst. Above all, no crying." The girl nodded her head. A dry, burning wind came in the window, together with the locomotive's whistle and the clatter of the old cars. The woman folded the plastic bag with the rest of the food and put it in the handbag. For a moment a complete picture of the town, on that bright August Tuesday, shone in the window. The girl wrapped the flowers in the soaking‐wet newspapers, moved a little farther away from the window, and stared at her mother. She received a pleasant expression in return. The train began to whistle and slowed down. A moment later it stopped. There was no one at the station. On the other side of the street, on the sidewalk shaded by the almond trees, only the pool hall was open. The town was floating in the heat. The woman and the girl got off the train and crossed the abandoned station—the tiles split apart by the grass growing up between—and over to the shady side of the street. It was almost two. At that hour, weighted down by drowsiness, the town was taking a siesta. The stores, the town offices, the public school were closed at eleven, and didn't reopen until a little before four, when the train went back. Only the hotel across from the station, with its bar and pool hall, and the telegraph office at one side of the plaza stayed open. The houses, most of them built on the banana company's model, had their doors locked from inside and their blinds drawn. In some of them it was so hot that the residents ate lunch in the patio. Others leaned a chair against the wall, in the shade of the almond trees, and took their siesta right out in the street. Keeping to the protective shade of the almond trees, the woman and the girl entered the town without disturbing the siesta. They went directly to the parish house. The woman scratched the metal grating on the door with her fingernail, waited a moment, and scratched again. An electric fan was humming inside. They did not hear the steps. They hardly heard the slight creaking of a door, and immediately a cautious voice, right next to the metal grating: "Who is it?" The woman tried to see through the grating. "I need the priest," she said. "He's sleeping now." "It's an emergency," the woman insisted. Her voice showed a calm determination. The door was opened a little way, noiselessly, and a plump, older woman appeared, with very pale skin and hair the color of iron. Her eyes seemed too small behind her thick eyeglasses. "Come in," she said, and opened the door all the way. They entered a room permeated with an old smell of flowers. The woman of the house led them to a wooden bench and signaled them to sit down. The girl did so, but her mother remained standing, absentmindedly, with both hands clutching the handbag. No noise could be heard above the electric fan. The woman of the house reappeared at the door at the far end of the room. "He says you should come back after three," she said in a very low voice. "He just lay down five minutes ago." "The train leaves at three thirty," said the woman. It was a brief and self‐assured reply, but her voice remained pleasant, full of undertones. The woman of the house smiled for the first time. "All right," she said. When the far door closed again, the woman sat down next to her daughter. The narrow waiting room was poor, neat, and clean. On the other side of the wooden railing which divided the room, there was a worktable, a plain one with an oilcloth cover, and on top of the table a primitive typewriter next to a vase of flowers. The parish records were beyond. You could see that it was an office kept in order by a spinster. The far door opened and this time the priest appeared, cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief. Only when he put them on was it evident that he was the brother of the woman who had opened the door. "How can I help you?" he asked. "The keys to the cemetery," said the woman. The girl was seated with the flowers in her lap and her feet crossed under the bench. The priest looked at her, then looked at the woman, and then through the wire mesh of the window at the bright, cloudless sky. "In this heat," he said. "You could have waited until the sun went down." The woman moved her head silently. The priest crossed to the other side of the railing, took out of the cabinet a notebook covered in oilcloth, a wooden penholder, and an inkwell, and sat down at the table. There was more than enough hair on his hands to account for what was missing on his head. "Which grave are you going to visit?" he asked. "Carlos Centeno's," said the woman. "Who?" "Carlos Centeno," the woman repeated. The priest still did not understand. "He's the thief who was killed here last week," said the woman in the same tone of voice. "I am his mother." The priest scrutinized her. She stared at him with quiet self‐control, and the Father blushed. He lowered his head and began to write. As he filled the page, he asked the woman to identify herself, and she replied unhesitatingly, with pre cise details, as if she were reading them. The Father began to sweat. The girl unhooked the buckle of her left shoe, slipped her heel out of it, and rested it on the bench rail. She did the same with the right one. It had all started the Monday of the previous week, at three in the morning, a few blocks from there. Rebecca, a lonely widow who lived in a house full of odds and ends, heard above the sound of the drizzling rain someone trying to force the front door from outside. She got up, rummaged around in her closet for an ancient revolver that no one had fired since the days of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, and went into the living room without turning on the lights. Orienting herself not so much by the noise at the lock as by a terror developed in her by twenty eight years of loneliness, she fixed in her imagination not only the spot where the door was but also the exact height of the lock. She clutched the weapon with both hands, closed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger. It was the first time in her life that she had fired a gun. Immediately after the explosion, she could hear nothing except the murmur of the drizzle on the galvanized roof. Then she heard a little metallic bump on the cement porch, and a very low voice, pleasant but terribly exhausted: "Ah, Mother." The man they found dead in front of the house in the morning, his nose blown to bits, wore a flannel shirt with colored stripes, everyday pants with a rope for a belt, and was barefoot. No one in town knew him. "So his name was Carlos Centeno," murmured the Father when he finished writing. "Centeno Ayala," said the woman. "He was my only boy." The priest went back to the cabinet. Two big rusty keys hung on the inside of the door; the girl imagined, as her mother had when she was a girl and as the priest himself must have imagined at some time, that they were Saint Peter's keys. He took them down, put them on the open notebook on the railing, and pointed with his forefinger to a place on the page he had just written, looking at the woman. "Sign here." The woman scribbled her name, holding the handbag under her arm. The girl picked up the flowers, came to the railing shuffling her feet, and watched her mother attentively. The priest sighed. "Didn't you ever try to get him on the right track?" The woman answered when she finished signing. "He was a very good man." The priest looked first at the woman and then at the girl, and realized with a kind of pious amazement that they were not about to cry. The woman continued in the same tone: "I told him never to steal anything that anyone needed to eat, and he minded me. On the other hand, before, when he used to box, he used to spend three days in bed, exhausted from being punched." "All his teeth had to be pulled out," interrupted the girl. "That's right," the woman agreed. "Every mouthful I ate those days tasted of the beatings my son got on Saturday nights." "God's will is inscrutable," said the Father. But he said it without much conviction, partly because experience had made him a little skeptical and partly because of the heat. He suggested that they cover their heads to guard against sunstroke. Yawning, and now almost completely asleep, he gave them instructions about how to find Carlos Centeno's grave. When they came back, they didn't have to knock. They should put the key under the door; and in the same place, if they could, they should put an offering for the Church. The woman listened to his directions with great attention, but thanked him without smiling. The Father had noticed that there was someone looking inside, his nose pressed against the metal grating, even before he opened the door to the street. Outside was a group of children. When the door was opened wide, the children scattered. Ordinarily, at that hour there was no one in the street. Now there were not only children. There were groups of people under the almond trees. The Father scanned the street swimming in the heat and then he understood. Softly, he closed the door again. "Wait a moment," he said without looking at the woman. His sister appeared at the far door with a black jacket over her nightshirt and her hair down over her shoulders. She looked silently at the Father. "What was it?" he asked. "The people have noticed," murmured his sister. "You'd better go out by the door to the patio," said the Father. "It's the same there," said his sister. "Everybody is at the windows." The woman seemed not to have understood until then. She tried to look into the street through the metal grating. Then she took the bouquet of flowers from the girl and began to move toward the door. The girl followed her. "Wait until the sun goes down," said the Father. "You'll melt," said his sister, motionless at the back of the room. "Wait and I'll lend you a parasol." "Thank you," replied the woman. "We're all right this way." She took the girl by the hand and went into the street."

"Tuesday Siesta"

When did Colombia gain independence?

1820

What was Trujillo's attempt to continue his family's rule in dictatorship?

Appointing his son as the succeeding President of the Dominican Republic

Why would Carlo give Bruno the nickname of Sábado Gigante?

Carlo bestowed this nickname on his neighbor Bruno to help his best friend believe that he could play baseball with affection and without fear or worry.

Which character from Dreaming in Cuban does the following describe? The matriarch of the Puente family who was in favor of supporting the Castro brothers.

Celia del Pino

Marquez was from where in South America?

Colombia

A Handbook to Luck is by

Cristina García

Dreamin in Cuban is by

Cristina García

What was the 1962 Attempt by the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba?

Cuban Missile Crisis

"Sábado Gigante" is by

Daniel Chacón

What was the title that Fidel Castro had during his time as Prime Minister of Cuba?

El Lider

What is the only poem in the Latino Unit called?

Exile

Which literary work is shown here?: "Ciudad Trujillo, New York City, 1960 The night we fled the country, Papi, you told me we were going to the beach, hurried me to get dressed along with the others, while posted at a window, you looked out at a curfew-darkened Ciudad Trujillo, speaking in worried whispers to your brothers, which car to take, who'd be willing to drive it, what explanation to give should we be discovered... On the way to the beach, you added, eyeing me. The uncles fell in chuckling phony chuckles, What a good time she'll have learning to swim! Back in my sisters' room Mami was packing a hurried bag, allowing one toy apiece, her red eyes belying her explanation: a week at the beach so Papi can get some rest. She dressed us in our best dresses, party shoes. Something was off, I knew, but I was young and didn't think adult things could go wrong. So as we quietly filed out of the house we wouldn't see again for another decade, I let myself lie back in the deep waters, my arms out like Jesus' on His cross, and instead of sinking down as I'd always done, magically, that night, I could stay up, floating out, past the driveway, past the gates, in the black Ford, Papi grim at the wheel, winding through back roads, stroke by difficult stroke, out on the highway, heading toward the coast. Past the checkpoint, we raced towards the airport, my sisters crying when we turned before the family beach house, Mami consoling, there was a better surprise in store for us! She couldn't tell, though, until...until we were there. But I had already swum ahead and guessed some loss much larger than I understood, more danger than the deep end of the pool. At the dark, deserted airport we waited. All night in a fitful sleep, I swam. At dawn the plane arrived, and as we boarded, Papi, you turned, your eyes scanned the horizon. as if you were trying to sight a distant swimmer, your hand frantically waving her back in, for you knew as we stepped inside the cabin that a part of both of us had been set adrift. Weeks later, wandering our new city, hand in hand, you tried to explain the wonders: escalators as moving belts; elevators: pulleys and ropes; Blond hair and blue eyes: a genetic code. We stopped before a summery display window at Macy's, The World's Largest Department Store, to admire a family outfitted for the beach; the handsome father, slim and sure of himself, so unlike you, Papi, with your thick mustache, your three-piece suit, your fedora hat, your accent. And by his side a girl who looked like Heidi in my storybook waded in colored plastic. We stood awhile, marveling at America, both of us trying hard to feel luckier than we felt, both of us pointing out the beach pails, the shovels, the sandcastles no wave would ever topple, the red and blue boats. And when we backed away, we saw our reflections superimposed, big-eyed, dressed too formally with all due respect as visitors to this country. Or like, Papi, two swimmers looking down at the quiet surface of our island waters, seeing their faces right before plunging in, eager, afraid, not yet sure of the outcome."

Exile

Who came to power during the Cuban Revolution (1952-1959)?

Fidel Castro

What is the autobiography Living to Tell the Tale about?

Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) recounts the real-life events that inspired him to write "Tuesday Siesta."

Which individual did Marquez look up to (hint: she inspired his way and manner of writing with magical realism).

His grandmother

Which literary pieces does The House on Mango Street Parallel to?

How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent and A Handbook To Luck

Which story is below?: "I can tell you one thing I do remember from right before we left. There was this old lady, Chucha, who had worked in Mami's family forever and who had this face like someone had wrung it out after washing it to try to get some of the black out. I mean, Chucha was super wrinkled and Haitian blue-black, not Dominican cafe-con-leche black. She was real Haitian too and that's why she couldn't say certain words like the word for parsley or anyone's name that had a j in it, which meant the family was like camp, everyone with nicknames Chucha could pronounce. She was always in a bad mood—not exactly a bad mood, but you couldn't get her to crack a smile or cry or anything. It was like all her emotions were spent, on account of everything she went through in her young years. Way back before Mami was even born, Chucha had just appeared at my grandfather's doorstep one night, begging to be taken in. Turns out it was the night of the massacre when Trujillo had decreed that all black Haitians on our side of the island would be executed by dawn. There's a river the bodies were finally thrown into that supposedly still runs red to this day, fifty years later. Chucha had escaped from some canepickers' camp and was asking for asylum. Papito took her in, poor skinny little thing, and I guess Mamita taught her to cook and iron and clean. Chucha was like a nun who had joined the convent of the de la Torre clan. She never married or went anywhere even on her days off. Instead, she'd close herself up in her room and pray for any de la Torre souls stuck up in purgatory. Anyhow, that last day on the Island, we were in our side-by-side bedrooms, the four girls, setting out our clothes for going to the United States. The two creepy spies had left, and Mami and Tío Vic were in the bedroom. They were telling Papi, who was hidden in this secret closet, about how we would be leaving in Tío Vic's limo for the airport for a flight he was going to get us. I know, I know, it sounds like something you saw on "Miami Vice," but all I'm doing is repeating what I've heard from the family. But here's what I do remember of my last day on the Island. Chucha came into our bedrooms with this bundle in her hands, and Nivea, who was helping us pack, said to her in a gruff voice, "What do you want, old woman?" None of the maids liked Chucha because they all thought she was kind of below them, being so black and Haitian and all. Chucha, though, just gave Nivea one of her spelling looks, and all of sudden, Nivea remembered that she had to iron our outfits for wearing on the airplane. Chucha started to unravel her bundle, and we all guessed she was about to do a little farewell voodoo on us. Chucha always had a voodoo job going, some spell she was casting or spirit she was courting or enemy she was punishing. I mean, you'd open a closet door, and there, in the corner behind your shoes, would sit a jar of something wicked that you weren't supposed to touch. Or you'd find a candle burning in her room right in front of someone's picture and a little dish with a cigar on it and red and white crepe streamers on certain days crisscrossing her room. Mami finally had to give her a room to herself because none of the other maids wanted to sleep with her. I can see why they were afraid. The maids said she got mounted by spirits. They said she cast spells on them. And besides, she slept in her coffin. No kidding. We were forbidden to go into her room to see it, but we were always sneaking back there to take a peek. She had her mosquito net rigged up over it, so it didn't look that strange like a real uncovered coffin with a dead person inside. At first, Mami wouldn't let her do it, sleep in her coffin, I mean. She told Chucha civilized people had to sleep on beds, coffins were for corpses. But Chucha said she wanted to prepare herself for dying and couldn't one of the carpenters at Papito's factory measure her and build her a wooden box that would serve as her bed for now and her coffin later. Mami kept saying, Nonsense, Chucha, don't get tragic. The thing was, you couldn't stand in Chucha's way even if you were Mami. Soon there were jars in Mami's closet, and her picture from when she was a baby being held by Chucha was out on Chucha's altar with mints on a little tin dish, and a constant votary candle going. Inside of a week, Mami relented. She said poor Chucha never asked for a blessed thing from the family, and had always been so loyal and good, and so, heavens to Betsy, if sleeping in her coffin would make the old woman happy, Mami would have a nice box built for her, and she did. It was plain pine, like Chucha wanted it, but inside, Mami had it lined in purple cushiony fabric, which was Chucha's favorite color, and bordered with white eyelet. So here's the part I remember about that last day. Once Nivea left the room, Chucha stood us all up in front of her. "Chachas—" she always called us that, from muchachas, girls, which is how come we had ended up nicknaming her a play echo of her name for us, Chucha. "You are going to a strange land." Something like that, I mean, I don't remember the exact words. But I do remember the piercing look she gave me as if she were actually going inside my head. "When I was a girl, I left my country too and never went back. Never saw father or mother or sisters or brothers. I brought only this along." She held the bundle up and finished unwrapping it from its white sheet. It was a statue carved out of wood like the kind I saw years later in the anthro textbooks I used to pore over, as if staring at those little talismanic wooden 10Start of paragraph 10 of 11carvings would somehow be my madeleine, bringing back my past to me like they say tasting that cookie did for Proust. But the textbook gods never triggered any four- volume memory in my head. Just this little moment I'm recalling here. Chucha stood this brown figure up on Carla's vanity. He had a grimacing expression on his face, deep grooves by his eyes and his nose and lips, as if he were trying to go but was real constipated. On top of his head was a little platform, and on it, Chucha placed a small cup of water. Soon, on account of the heat, I guess, that water started evaporating and drops ran down the grooves carved in that wooden face so that the statue looked as if it were crying. Chucha held each of our heads in her hands and wailed a prayer over us. We were used to some of this strange stuff from daily contact with her, but maybe it was because today we could feel an ending in the air, anyhow we all started to cry as if Chucha had finally released her own tears in each of us."

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is also by

Julia Alavarez

Exile is by

Julia Alvarez

Which story is below?: "While the train stood there I had the sensation that we were not altogether alone. But when it pulled away, with an immediate, heart-wrenching blast of its whistle, my mother and I were left forsaken beneath the infernal sun, and all the heavy grief of the town came down on us. But we did not say anything to each other. The old wooden station with its tin roof and running balcony was like a tropical version of the ones we knew from westerns. We crossed the deserted station whose tiles were beginning to crack under the pressure of grass, and we sank into the torpor of siesta as we sought the protection of the almond trees. Since I was a boy I had despised those inert siestas because we did not know what to do. "Be quiet, we're sleeping," the sleepers would murmur without waking. Stores, public offices, and schools closed at twelve and did not open again until a little before three. The interiors of the houses floated in a limbo of lethargy. In some it was so unbearable that people would hang their hammocks in the courtyard or place chairs in the shade of the almond trees and sleep sitting up in the middle of the street. Only the hotel across from the station, with its bar and billiard room, and the telegraph office behind the church remained open. Everything was identical to my memories, but smaller and poorer, and leveled by a windstorm of fatality: the decaying houses themselves, the tin roofs perforated by rust, the levee with its crumbling granite benches and melancholy almond trees, and all of it transfigured by the invisible burning dust that deceived the eye and calcinated the skin. On the other side of the train tracks the private paradise of the banana company, stripped now of its electrified wire fence, was a vast thicket with no palm trees, ruined houses among the poppies, and the rubble of the hospital destroyed by fire. There was not a single door, a crack in a wall, a human trace that did not find a supernatural resonance in me. My mother held herself very erect as she walked with her light step, almost not perspiring in her funereal dress, and in absolute silence, but her mortal pallor and sharpened profile revealed what was happening to her on the inside. When we turned the corner, the dust burned my feet through the weave of my sandals. The feeling of being forsaken became unbearable. Then I saw myself and I saw my mother, just as I saw, when I was a boy, the mother and sister of the thief whom Maria Consuegra had killed with a single shot one week earlier, when he tried to break into her house. At three in the morning the sound of someone trying to force the street door from the outside had wakened her. She got up without lighting the lamp, felt around in the armoire for an archaic revolver that no one had fired since the War of a Thousand Days, and located in the darkness not only the place where the door was but also the exact height of the lock. Then she aimed the weapon with both hands, closed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger. She had never fired a gun before, but the shot hit its target through the door. He was the first dead person I had seen. When I passed by at seven in the morning on my way to school, the body was still lying on the sidewalk in a patch of dried blood, the face destroyed by the lead that had shattered its nose and come out one ear. He was wearing a sailor's T-shirt with colored stripes and ordinary trousers held up by a rope instead of a belt, and he was barefoot. At his side, on the ground, they found the homemade pick lock with which he had tried to jimmy the lock. The town dignitaries came to Maria Consuegra's house to offer her their condolences for having killed the thief. I went that night with Papalelo, and we found her sitting in an armchair from Manila that looked like an enormous wicker peacock, surrounded by the fervor of her friends who listened to the story she had repeated a thousand times. Everyone agreed with her that she had fired out of sheer fright. It was then that my grandfather asked her if she had heard anything after the shot, and she answered that the first she had heard a great silence, then the metallic sound of the picklock falling on the cement, and then a faint, anguished voice: "Mother, help me!" Maria Consuegra, it seemed, had not been conscious of this heart-breaking lament until my grandfather asked her the question. Only then did she burst into tears. This happened on a Monday. On Tuesday of the following week, during siesta, I was playing tops with Luis Carmelo Correa, my oldest friend in life, when we were surprised by the sleepers waking before it was time and looking out the windows. Then we saw in the deserted street a woman dressed in strict mourning and a girl about twelve years old who was carrying a bouquet of faded flowers wrapped in newspaper. They protected themselves from the burning sun with a black umbrella and were quite oblivious to the effrontery of the people who watched them pass by. They were the mother and younger sister of the dead thief, bringing flowers for his grave. That vision pursued me for many years, like a single dream that the entire town watched through its windows as it passed, until I managed to exorcise it in a story. But the truth is that I did not become aware of the drama of the woman and the girl, or their imperturbable dignity, until the day I went with my mother to sell the house and surprised myself walking down the same deserted street at the same lethal hour. "I feel as if I were the thief," I said. My mother did not understand me. In fact, when we passed the house of Maria Consuegra she did not even glance at the door where you could still see the patched bullet hole in the wood. Years later, recalling that trip with her, I confirmed that she did remember the tragedy but would have given her soul to forget it ´´

Living To Tell The Tale

What does A Handbook To Luck give a glimpse of?

Living in a different story and how truth can be expressed in many ways.

Which character from Dreaming in Cuban does the following describe? The daughter of Celia del Pino who was a capitalist that had an unappreciative attitude towards anything pertaining to Cuba.

Lourdes Puente

What was Marquez's writing styles?

Magical realis

______________________ - A narrative technique in which the fantastic and the mythical are appearing as real and placed side by side with the ordinary, so fantastic and mythical become one of the same thing.

Magical realism

Which character from Dreaming in Cuban does the following describe? The son of Mrs. Lourdes Puente who narrates the story of his Cuban family's two preceding generations before and the one himself is within being divided by politics and geography. Pilar is the one in his family that is ambivalent towards Cuba because he wonders what the experience would have been with his grandmother under Castro's rule.

Pilar Puente

Who was the dictatorial ruler of the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961?

Rafael Trujillo

What is the central contrast in The House on Mango Street?

Reality is compared to the narrator's family home.

Who is Maria Consuegra in the fictional account, "Tuesday Siesta"?

Rebecca

How many years did the Cuban Revolution occur for?

Seven Years

How did Mrs. Centeno respond to the priest?

She did her best to raise Carlos

What ensured Colombia's independence?

Simon Bolivar becoming Colombia's first president not under Spanish rule in 1820.

T/F: Marquez signed the slideshow where his life is discussed.

True

T/F: There is no one theme.

True

Which excerpt has the following summary? : "Bruno is large, like his father, and because of that everyone assumes he is good at sports. But he is not. Bruno's father wants him to be tough, but is disappointed in him, calling him a girl's name around the house. Carlo, one of Bruno's neighbors, tries to encourage Bruno to be a good player, but that never happens. Instead, Bruno prefers to be inside, making up scenarios for his G.I. Joe dolls. One day, Bruno joins Carlo's little sister Gracie in playing with her dolls, and together they make up complicated scenarios about international spies and detectives. Bruno never wants to play sports again. Gracie and Bruno have to keep their games a secret and use codes to meet up. They play in the back of Bruno's father's pickup truck. One day, Carlo spots them back there and becomes suspicious. After that, Gracie refuses to play with Bruno again, saying it isn't right."

Sábado Gigante

What was the attempted U.S. invasion that came two years after the Cuban Revolution ended known as?

The Bay of Pigs

What was the name of Colombia's civil war?

The War of 1000 Days.

How does Alvarez use "accent" as a symbol in her story? The accent symbolizes speaking as something that helps with learning to keep quiet in order to see that everyone is equal.

The accent symbolizes speaking as something that helps with learning to keep quiet in order to see that everyone is equal.

True or False: Themes are always about life.

True

What is the theme of the poem Exile?

The central theme of "Exile" is to be grateful for what you have without wanting anything more to focus on what is important.

What common themes run through all of the works we have examined in this unit?

The common themes that run throughout each of the literary works in this unit include to speak only wisely with quietness and morality and you are who and what you are with your actions and personality regardless of the cultures view on yourself.

The epigraph (a short quotation at the beginning of a literary to suggest its theme) of Living to Tell the Tale reads: "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it." Apply the epigraph to the non-fictional account of Maria Consuegra and to the fictional account of Rebecca and Carlos Centeno.

The epigraph of Sabado Gigante reads: "Life is not based on someone else's point of view or opinions, but what actions and good things are remembered in order to find the truth in it."

What day time is Living To Tell the Tall set?

The middle of the day with the Colombians sleeping from the dust bowl kind of afternoons.

What began the Cuban Revolution in 1952?

The political thing that began this twentieth century period of Cuba's history was when the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raoul put the aforesaid nation in Communist control.

How and when does the narrator's attitude toward Chucha seem to change? Why is this change significant?

The significant change with a different attitude towards Chucha happens on the last night before the narrator leaves from the Domenican Republic in which Chucha cries with the primary speaker and her sisters after being numb of her emotions.

Who is the speaker of the poem Exile?

The speakers of this historic poetic piece of literature are the Garcia Sisters.

What is the theme of "Tuesday Siesta"?

The theme of Tuesday Siesta is to not judge a book by its cover, meaning that it draws moral conclusions after both sides of the story are heard.

What themes does Cristina Garcia address in A Handbook to Luck?

The two main themes that Mr. Garcia addresses in his novel are you have every right to be who you want to be without society or family giving yourself definition and to never be afraid to express your individual uniqueness.

________ is the central insight about life in fiction.

Theme

How does "Sábado Gigante" show that stereotypes are a barrier to the realization of personal identity?

This short story makes present stereotypes as barriers in realizing genuine personality because it ties together the view of the family on who Bruno is and those that accepted "Sabado Gigante" for his true unique identity that he wanted to live as.

What is the order of paragraph on each essay or question that allows it to be coherent?

Topic Sentence, First Common Detail, First Commentary, Second Common Detail, Second Commentary, and Last But Not Least, The Concluding Sentence.

What is a lesson from Tuesday Siesta?

We assume we know someone when we don't know them.

A topic sentence is always a -----, not a ----.

claim, fact

Theme is not:

something that tells us what to do, a moral, lesson, or prescription for behavior

Marquez felt he was the ----- after walking down the street.

thief