Getting Home Alive by Aurora Levins Morales & Rosario Morales Essay Example
Getting Home Alive by Aurora Levins Morales & Rosario Morales Essay Example

Getting Home Alive by Aurora Levins Morales & Rosario Morales Essay Example

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  • Pages: 4 (845 words)
  • Published: April 25, 2022
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Getting Home Alive" by Aurora Levins Morales & Rosario Morales analysis issues of class, race gender and sexuality. The authors Rosario and Aurora Morales are mother and daughter. In this book they have written it with alternating voices through sketches, poems and short stories that celebrate the lives of daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, grandmothers and a family that does span across continents, languages, generations, religions and cultures. These authors throughout the readings of the short stories and poems express their feminist and radical views in a rhetoric that echoes that of the 1960s. These women are seen to speak for a majority of women of many places and times. They articulate various issues such as those of gender, sexuality, race and class throughout the readings. This paper provides a cri

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tique of the themes discussed by the authors in the book Getting Home Alive.

On the chapter I’m On Nature’s Side, the authors provide a narrative of how the rich on society look down towards the less privileged. This they do by bringing out the elements of how the strong ion society such as the entrepreneurs, chief executive officers, scientists and the other members of the ruling class are set out towards controlling the others that are less privileged. This they do so through alluding to a third world woman whose point of view is equated to that of an insect. The insects are well known to be under pest control from the farmers that want their yields to grow at the cost of killing the lives of these small animals. In doing so there would be an increased profit, productivity and markets will have a sheltere

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taxes and fixed prices. In order to have all these insects need to be control if not killed so as to achieve these goals.

This imagery can be equated to issues of gender, class and race all in this short story. The authors nicely capture the issues of race by indicating how the white man has all along endeavored towards conquering the other races by subjugating the other races into his ideologies. This can be evidenced from the first paragraph of the short story whereby the authors assert the ones that bring about the issues of race, superiority and discrimination are the scientists, corporate managers and other intellectuals of the society. The victim that is on the receiving end is an African woman who has to endure all this. This does also encompass the issue of gender inequality by usage of the African woman as being the one being subjected to these deadly attacks from the ruling class of the society.

However, the authors finish this story by indicating that the oppressed that is the insects, no matter the number of sprays they receive in order for the farmers to achieve pest control and elimination of the species fails since these insects learn new ways of surviving this harsh environment hence survive and create the next generations. This can be alluded to the oppressed in society, the female gender that has been on the receiving end and other races from exploitation from the ruling class that, however all these do occur to them, they still are able to survive and live for another day in the harsh cruel environment they are under in.
In the other poems Tita’s

Poem, Road Kill, Child of The Americans and Africa the authors still espouse the issues of gender, class and race by using an allegory of various symbols to highlight the message. For instance, in the poem Child of The Americans and Africa, the authors relay who they are as well as their ancestors and the contributions they had made towards their lives. They feel that the ancestors were part of their life thus being part of them though they do believe that both of them are individually new and unique.

In these poems they also air the voices of the experiences they have undergone through and thus they believe that their collective voice penned through the writings speaks for the issues of racial discrimination and other forms of social unrest that were prevalent during their time. There is need to understand that the narratives in this book bear the American history of the 1960’s and the issues of gender discrimination, race and sexuality were a common thing during this period of time. The issue of sexuality is also tackled in Tita’s Poem where women are called derogatory names such as skinny, stringy haired, lesbian junkie prostitutes. However, the confounding issue in this poem is more of the female gender being subjected to acts that are not morally pleasing. Thus the authors seem to capture however through radical means through their portrayal of being feminist radicalists who were trying to perpetuate the vast various issues that were confronted by the women in the period of the 1960s in America. The authors also assert that however these kinds of injustices being carried on the women they still were

able to press on and fight for what is rightfully theirs.

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